


Bad & Bougie

by BetteNoire (WeAreWolves)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bottom!Bucky, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Shrunkyclunks, Socialist!Steve, billionaire!bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:17:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: Steve Rogers is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who believes that healthcare should be free and billionaires shouldn’t exist.Steve Rogers’ dick, however, is a class traitor who would sell out all Steve’s principles in a hot second for a nice set of shoulders in a Savile Row suit.It’s not a great thing to find out about yourself, but Steve grits his teeth. All he has to do is get through the rest of the art exhibit. It’s not as if he’ll see the entitled asshole in the velvet suit ever again, and besides, he tells himself, at least 90% of Barnes’ attractiveness is the suit. Anyone would look amazing in a $10,000 bespoke suit.And then he realises, as Barnes turns towards him, pretty face contorting in shocked fury, that he’s met the guy before.





	1. You Had One Job

Steve’s been out of the ice for two years but everyone from Tony’s interns to the baristas at the Stark Tower staff-only Starbucks still weigh in on things he absolutely _has_ to try out in the new century. That’s how he finds himself bicycling up Manhattan’s Westside path on a sunny Friday in October, enjoying the view along the Hudson. He’d checked out a Citibike like a normal New Yorker and, with the addition of a baseball cap and sunglasses and a loose plaid shirt, he’d been able to blend anonymously into the trickle of early-afternoon joggers and bikers. It was delightful, really. The wind in his hair, the sun on his face, the surprising peace and beauty of the gardens lining the path. The cute little red lighthouse tucked away under the George Washington Bridge, where he’d turned around to head south again. Sure, he’d run this path, but biking it was different: smoother, more relaxed.

Steve bikes a little faster, because he can. He’s having fun, and a genuine smile spreads across his face as he leans into a bend.

Then his phone starts screeching. It’s the Avengers emergency alarm. Steve wobbles on his bike, then reaches back with one hand to fumble for his phone in his back pocket so he can shut off the alarm and give Jarvis an ETA. He’s just coming past Chelsea Piers and there’s a van half-pulled out into the bike path and Steve swerves around it one-handed while trying to get the phone’s face recognition to work with the other and telling Jarvis he’ll be there in fifteen and maybe he swung out a little far into the other lane to get around the van but Citibikes are not easy to steer one-handed and then there’s a crash and he hits what feels like a dump truck, if dump trucks swore like longshoremen.

There’s a second crash and more swearing and Steve glimpses a black bike toppling over but he himself is too busy bouncing off the parked van and trying to keep his phone from breaking. He rights himself, adrenaline spiking hot through him. When he looks up, there’s another cyclist sprawled across the cobblestones trying to free his feet from where they’ve gotten stuck in the clips of his simple, matte-black hybrid bike.

Steve feels cripplingly guilty, but also: he needs to get to Stark Tower immediately. He shifts from one foot to the other and stutters out, “I’m so sorry, are you—“

“Were you fucking _FACETIMING_ while bicycling?” the man says, standing up shakily. He barely looks at Steve, instead checking over his knees (bloody), his long-sleeved shirt (torn) and his bike (seemingly unbroken, from what little Steve can tell). He finally deigns to glare at Steve, wide, blue-grey eyes shooting daggers at him. “Have you ever considered that maybe, I dunno, _watching where you’re going_ might be a better idea?”

Steve’s phone starts blaring again. He looks down at it, stabs it into silence with his thumb, then looks back at Hot, Angry Bike Messenger. Because the guy Steve ran into definitely has that shabby-hot bike messenger thing down absolutely perfectly: the ass-hugging cargo shorts, the tight long-sleeved tee that’s a little faded and a lot frayed, biking gloves, and a lean body with excellent legs and surprisingly broad shoulders, and a mess of long, wavy dark hair under his helmet.

Well, shit, Steve thinks. Hot, Angry Bike Messenger might be the prettiest white guy he’s seen in a long time.

Steve’s phone vibrates with a text. ALIENS IN NEW MEXICO, it says. WHEELS UP 5.

“I swear to God I am two seconds away from throwing your phone in the Hudson,” Hot, Angry Bike Messenger growls as he shifts his cross-body bag back where it belongs.

“You’re okay, not injured? And you’re bike’s okay?” Steve says.

Hot, Angry Bike Messenger indicates his skinned leg and shoulder as he rights his bike. “I’m peachy!” He roars. “I love Citibike riders. You all are FABULOUS. _Really_. Never a dull moment.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “I’m really, really sorry, again.” He indicates eastwards, towards Stark Tower. “I, uh, gotta go.”

Steve has an urge to take off his hat and glasses, so Hot, Angry Bike Messenger realises that he isn’t leaving because he’s a jerk, but because he’s Captain America and he has important Avengers business. He quashes it. He’s not sure what he’d do if he found out (as he suspects) that Hot, Angry Bike Messenger didn’t give a damn. Propose marriage, maybe.

The light changes and Steve flees across 12th Avenue, pouring on all the speed he can.

“And wear a helmet, asshole,” floats after him, a parting shot through the traffic.

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

“No, Tony, I’m not interested,” Steve says a week later, wiping a hand down his face. He’s still feeling rough after the fight outside Las Cruces with that Brood spawnship, broken ribs re-knitting themselves and body still clearing out poison from an alien warrior’s stinger.

“But it’s art. You _love_ art,” Tony says, brow furrowed in confusion at either the blueberry shake he’s trying to make, or at Steve. Maybe both. Steve can’t tell.

“it’s a _gala_. I _hate_ galas. It’ll be full of billionaires. I hate billionaires,” Steve points out. Really, he just wants to sleep for a week. He’s amazed Tony’s even considering going to an art opening, given that he’d been even more injured than Steve in the fight in New Mexico: broken ribs, a cracked femur.

“I’m a billionaire,” Tony says. “You don’t hate me.” He pauses, then continues, his tone less confident. “…Do you?”

Steve rakes his hand through his hair. The irony of having this discussion on the 72nd floor of Stark Tower, a few floors above his free luxury apartment, isn’t lost on him. “No, Tony. I mean, do I hate that you earn more in five minutes than an average working-class person makes in five years? Yes. Do I hate that 40% of Americans struggle to afford basic needs like food and housing and healthcare? Fuck yes. Do I think inherited wealth is a crime? Absolutely. But I don’t hate _you_, personally.”

Tony fidgets with his smoothie, trying to stab into its top with a paper straw. “I did the thing, you know,” he mutters. “With the better benefits and wages for our entry-level and part-time employees. And monitoring our subcontractors’ labour practices too.”

Steve smiles. “I know. And I was really touched you listened to me.”

“Eh, it was kind of shocking how little money some of them were making. Plus, you’d have had Stark Industries unionized behind my back if I hadn’t,” Tony says.

“Unions _good_, Tony.”

“Thanks, Eugene Debs.”

“My mom voted for him for president, you know,” Steve says, pointing at Tony. “And we were both Socialist Party members. We had cards and everything. They’re in the Smithsonian now, but the cowards won’t display them.”

“Ugh, of course you were,” Tony mutters. There’s still something a little off about his body language as he limps over to the seating area, clutching his smoothie.

“Tony,” Steve says, sternly. “Listen to me. _I like you_. I know you’re genuinely trying to help people. The clean energy initiatives, the prosthetic program for veterans… I know you’re a good person.”

“And is it thus so much of a jump that _other_ billionaires might be good people?” Tony asks, settling stiffly in the armchair opposite Steve.

“Yes,” says Steve. “I can’t imagine a worse evening than having bigoted fat cats blocking my view of art while bloviating in my general direction about America, and how they’re the _real_ victims.”

Tony frowns, then silently counts on his fingers. “Yeah, okay, point, I can think off about nine people that would do that off the top of my head.”

“Also, private collections of cultural masterpieces are bad. Especially _other_ cultures’ masterpieces,” Steve says, tipping his head back against the chair and shutting his eyes.

“That would be why they’re opening a foundation, so the public has access to it,” Tony says, a slow, Cheshire-cat smile spreading across his face. “Besides, it’s a bit of a celebration, too, they’ve only just gotten back a bunch of paintings the Nazis looted off them back in the day.”

Steve sits up. “Wait. This is the Barnes collection? You didn’t tell me this was the Barnes collection. Holy shit, Tony, they have some of the earliest, most formative Impressionist works there—“

Tony makes a pantomime grimace. “They’re billionaires, though. 300 years of inherited wealth. Probably would have a title too, if they weren’t Jewish. But you’re right, fuck ‘em, we’ll skip the opening and stay in the tower, we can have a movie night—“

“—No!” Steve squeaks. “They have a Van Gogh that hasn’t seen the light of day since 1920–“

“Billionaires,” Tony pouts. “_Lots_ of billionaires.”

“Tony,” Steve says, battlefield-calm, “I will stop actively trying to unionize your employees if you can get me in early to see that exhibition.”

“One, you’re only saying that because the union’s already established, and two, you have to wear a tuxedo.”

“Dress uniform.”

“_Sold_, to the Man with a Plan,” Tony says, holding a finger up as he texts with his other hand. “Lucky for you, I know James Barnes. We have the same therapist.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Capitalism is rigged towards the rich,” he grumbles.

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

That Tuesday, Steve arrives at an East Village address at exactly 4pm, in his dress blues, and doesn’t even have to give his name at the entrance before the pair of guards (two Black guys, East Village chic in dark draped asymmetric clothes) nod and open the door of a beautifully renovated little warehouse for him.

“Captain Rogers,” says a small but severe Latinx woman with a tablet. “Welcome to the Barnes Foundation. The exhibition starts on the top floor and continues downwards.” She indicates a fancily-renovated cargo elevator to Steve’s right. “If you please.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. “I’m really happy to be here. Please thank Mr Barnes for allowing me to sneak in a day early.”

“Thank him yourself,” the woman smiles. Her lipstick is brick-red and completely perfect against her dark dress. “He and Mr Stark are doing their own last-minute walk-through.”

The elevator lets out on the fifth floor, and Steve finds it hard to breathe. The building is stunning, worth a fortune on its own, with impossibly high ceilings and tall windows looking out over East Village tenement roofs, and a skylight that’s also a small reflecting pool, casting ripples of light across the warm wood floor as the sun passes through the water. It would be enough of a sight to merit the trip, even if the walls were bare.

But they’re not.

The magnificence of the collection almost overwhelms Steve. It sickens him that all this beauty should be locked up in the ownership of one family, but he has to admit that the Barneses — bankers and art collectors for countless generations — have unbelievable taste in art. There, a trio of Van Goghs, each more stunning than the last. Here, a gigantic Manet. There, a Klimt portrait of a dark-haired woman that Steve had never seen before. On the dividing wall, an early Francis Picabia so playful, and so utterly unlike the artist’s other work, that Steve gasps. Greens and yellows and red stars and cavorting fantastic beasts in a bold but charming style.

He looks at the label on the wall next to it, his new favourite painting.

He learns that it was a commission, for the childrens’ bedroom of the family’s Paris townhouse. Steve wants to vomit, just a little bit, and resolves not to read any more of the labels.

On the other side of a freestanding dividing wall, Steve can hear voices. Tony, of course; and a smooth, cultured purr with a slight British accent, which must be Barnes. He can tell from the echoes that the two of them aren’t even looking at the art, they’re standing in front of the wall of glass and looking out over the rooftops, which is what Tony does every day forty blocks further north. He’s again glad Tony got him in early; he really doesn’t think he could stand a crowd of rich people casually ignoring this many masterpieces. Two is bad enough.

Still, he should thank this Barnes person for allowing him to avoid the crowd.

As he rounds the end of the dividing wall, Steve sees Barnes and Tony exactly where he expected them: gazing out the window across the sea of former tenement roofs, their backs to him. Barnes is taller than Tony, by quite a bit, maybe even as tall as Steve, but aristocratic in his slimness. He’s got dark wavy hair slicked back into the sort of lion’s-mane sweep that only old European money seems to be able to pull off, and he’s wearing a navy velvet suit that’s tailored sharply enough to make angels weep.

Steve hates him. Steve hates his crisp French cuffs and his signet ring, his jaunty lavender socks and his perfectly-shined shoes.

Steve hates that he can see how perfect Barnes’ round ass is in those velvet trousers, and how narrow his waist, and Steve hates more than anything else how he has a sudden and almost undeniable urge to enact class war by shoving Barnes against that floor to ceiling window and peeling that bespoke suit off him and teaching him what it feels like to get fucked by the working class for once, instead of the other way around.

Steve’s dick is already starting to chub up at the thought of rubbing all over Barnes’ velvet-covered backside, of burying his fingers into that long hair and yanking until Barnes begs.

Steve’s dick is, clearly, a class traitor. He adjusts himself surreptitiously, breathes deeply and reminds his cock that bourgeois collaborationism will not be tolerated and, more importantly, that any man would look good in a $10,000 Savile Row suit. Out of the suit, Barnes is probably one of those flabby-skinny European boys with tragic underwear choices, a weak chin and way too many pairs of sandals.

He tunes back in as Barnes laughs, low and rich, like he’s just heard a dirty joke.

Steve’s dick petitions him about important recent developments in potential alternate meanings of the phrase “eat the rich”.  
  
Steve retaliates by imagining Margaret Thatcher naked.

“—Still mad about jetpacks. My father had a prototype for flying cars, we could dust that off,” says Tony, turning as he hears Steve’s footsteps.

“Lord, no,” says Barnes, still gazing out the window, giving Steve an uninterrupted view of the immaculate sweep of his suit down from broad shoulders to that little waist. It should not be possible to tailor the back of a jacket that immaculately, Steve thinks.

“I’m increasingly of the opinion nobody should be allowed to drive at all, and we should just improve public transport,” Barnes continues. “Did I tell you about the other day when I got hit—“

“Ah, the good Captain arrives!” Tony’s face lights up. He’s in a dark-purple suit, loose enough to not hinder the bandages around his chest, or the brace on his leg. He’s got a ridiculous black walking-stick topped with a skull, like some sort of pantomime villain. Tony tugs on Barnes’ left elbow with the hand that’s not holding the stick. “Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes. Bucky Barnes, meet Captain America.”

_What the hell sort of rich-person nonsense name is Bucky_, Steve thinks, before Barnes turns around and Steve’s train of thought crashes through the station wall and careens, screeching, into the busy freeway beyond. Because Barnes is insanely, ridiculously handsome. High cheekbones, big, soulful grey eyes, and full lips just on the right side of sullen.

And Steve’s seen him before. Somewhere. He tries to think, but he’s having trouble as his dick is shouting _I told you so_ at him so loudly it drowns out rational thought.

“Oh, I love a man in uniform—“ Barnes purrs, as his eyes sweep up Steve’s body.

Just as they lock eyes, Steve suddenly remembers where he met Barnes.

Unfortunately, so does Barnes.

His pretty face contorts in shock and rage. “CAPTAIN IDIOT, more like,” he shouts, pointing at Steve.

“What,” Tony mouths, his face caught between delight and horror.

“This is the moron who knocked me down on the bike path last week!” Barnes roars. “He was facetiming and swung out into my lane and ran straight into me, _head on!”_

“I was trying to turn off the damn Assembly alarm on my phone,” Steve yells back, taking a step forwards. “Excuse me for inconveniencing you while attending to matters of national security!”

Barnes doesn’t back down. In fact he walks right up into Steve’s space, his perfect jaw tense. “_Inconveniencing_ me? You _muppet_. The only reason I didn’t shatter my wrist when you knocked me over was—“ Barnes snorts in fury and he peels a glove off his left hand. “—was because of _this_.”

Steve looks down at the hand Barnes is brandishing in front of him. It’s… _metal_. Tiny, articulated plates, molded to look exactly like a human hand and with all the range of movement of one. But it’s a brushed, silvery metal.

“One of mine,” Tony whispers.

He steps back, and glances from Barnes to Tony.

“I made it for him after the kidnap,” Tony says, his voice softer, his shoulders up around his ears. Steve knows that pose. Somehow they’d managed to barrel into very personal territory for Tony; something he doesn’t want to talk about.

“After your kidnap?” Steve asks.

Tony shakes his head, a small, tense gesture. “No, after his.” He indicates Barnes, who has his arms folded and is still glaring at Steve with forbiddingly condescending hauteur.

Steve wants to wipe that look off Barnes’ face. Possibly with his dick.

He shuts his eyes and wills his libido to settle down. Why is he like this? Why can’t he get a huge honking crush on a nice labour organizer, or a public-school teacher, or a muckraking journalist? What in his entire life prepared him for a sudden, desperate need to dick down with his class enemy? Ugh, now he’s picturing articulated silver fingers wrapping around his cock. Why couldn’t it have stopped with being horny for exquisite tailoring? That was bad enough to discover about himself, as a Socialist. But apparently the day is full of surprises and his fetishising of a disabled person’s adaptive device is one of them.

“He doesn’t know,” Barnes says quietly to Tony.

“No,” Tony says. “Didn’t really come up.” Then Tony looks up at Steve. “Buck got taken by Hydra when he was in college.”

Barnes turns away and walks up to a particularly nice Lautrec of a ballet dancer. “They wanted something from my family. They tried to torture me but joke’s on them, my family sent me to boarding school from age 8 so I’m pretty immune to that sort of thing. Then they moved on to sending little pieces of me back to my father, to convince him to give them what they wanted.” He waggles his metal hand. “They started with fingers.”

Steve steps forwards, despite himself. “What happened,” he asks. Barnes looks about 30, so if he was taken in college… Steve’s brain does the math. That was pre-Avengers. Before Tony’s kidnapping, before Iron Man. There would have been nobody to get Barnes, nobody to save him.

“I escaped,” Barnes says simply, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking up at the Lautrec like it had an answer for him.

“He went all Bear Jew on them,” Tony says, grinning.

“Please,” Barnes says, turning and raising an eyebrow. He gestures over his chest and groin. “I wax.”

That was not information Steve needed, because now he’s forced to picture it. For science. “What did they want,” Steve stutters. “Hydra, I mean.”

Barnes smiles then, unexpectedly. It’s a wicked and brilliant look on him, his eyes glittering. “Oh, well, you see, the art collection’s just a bit of a smokescreen. What my family _really_ does is collect artifacts. Nasty little magical things, stuff linked up with prophecies, anything that would be a bad idea to have in general population. Or in the hands of a fascist organization bent on justifying its own brutality.”

“What,” Steve says.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Barnes says. “We’re actually exhibiting my favourite artifact on the next floor.” He walks back through the gallery Steve had entered, past the van Goghs, past the Picabia, towards a set of stairs. “Oh, this floor’s is all the stuff we finally got back from German collections. That was fun. I highly recommend suing Nazis.”

“Punching them’s better,” Steve says.

“How about both?” Barnes grins, easy and free, and Steve’s heart judders at _that_ smile, _that_ body in that slim, perfect suit. Why did it have to be velvet. Why. Steve can’t even put his hands in his pockets to stop himself wanting to reach out and touch it, because he’s in his uniform. He balls his hands into fists and lines his thumbs up with the gold infantry stripe on his trousers.

But he can’t help making a snarky comment about the Picabia as they pass it. More in an attempt to crush his stupid attraction for this insufferable peacock than because he actually wants to know, he asks, “So if this was the kids’ bedroom painting in Paris, what was the nursery-room mural in your London house?” There’s maybe a little more acid in his tone than necessary but fuck it, that painting on its own could pay off the school lunch debt of most of America.

Barnes turns, smirks at him. “Oh, you haven’t seen the Matisse? It’s on the second floor.” There’s steel behind that smile and Steve wants nothing more to push against it, see how much Barnes will push back. “Make sure you look for the little repair on the bottom right, it’s where I threw a toy truck through it as a child.”

“I didn’t have hot water as a child,” Steve says.

“Oh, neither did I, for most of it,” Barnes replies. “English public school’s a trip, let me tell you.”

They descend one level into a more eclectic gallery that’s a headspinning mix of contemporary, classical and impressionist works: a Basquiat next to a Greek statue; a breathtaking Clyfford Still that’s like a jagged wound in reality opposite an unexpectedly floral Cy Twombly tryptich that Steve straight-up wants to steal as soon as he sees it and, in a case at the centre of an end wall, a medieval sword in a scabbard. Barnes casually waves his metal hand at the gallery as he crosses the room, his steps almost silent on the warm gold floorboards. “This floor is my personal collection.” He walks up to the sword and stares at it, thoughtful.

“Is that—“ Tony starts.

“Yeah,” Barnes breathes.

“Are you sure exhibiting it is a good idea, Bucky?” Tony asks.

“Fuck them,” Barnes says.

Steve looks for a label next to the sword’s display case, but there is none. “You two going to fill me in?” He looks at Tony because it’s better if he doesn’t look at Barnes right now.

Tony points at the sword. “It’s Excalibur,” he says, deadpan.

Steve must make some sort of face that reflects his disbelief, because Barnes casts a silver eye in his direction and says, “Yeah, we originally found it in a cave near our country house about a hundred years ago.” Barnes sighs, contemplative, and his gaze returns to the sword, like he can’t take his eyes off dangerous things. Steve can empathise. “Our family is a magnet for bullshit like this, let me tell you. I’m not sure we actually _chose_ to do this. Things just kept… showing up.”

Tony frowns. “I thought _you_ found it.”

“Great Grand Uncle Percy lost it one night when he was drunk. Not that it narrows it down, Great Grand Uncle Percy was always drunk but then again if I’d been named Perceval I’d pretty much stay smashed as a life plan, too. I found it when I was swimming in our lake when I was eighteen,” Barnes says.

Steve stares at Barnes as he processes the casual and immense privilege behind a statement like _our lake_.

Barnes smirks back at him. “One of our lakes.”

Okay, so this asshole is _definitely_ fucking with him. A muscle in Steve’s jaw twitches as he grits his teeth, tearing himself away from staring at Barnes to look over the sword instead. It looks… just like an old sword. Not fancy, even if its scabbard is in surprisingly good condition. “That can’t be Excalibur,” he says. “Excalibur’s a myth.”

Barnes shrugs. “Hydra thought it was Excalibur. Enough to kidnap me after they found a report in the local newspaper, teen boy finds sword in lake, et cetera.”

“Then why is it here, if it’s dangerous,” Steve growls.

Barnes turns towards Steve and bares his teeth. “Because you know what’s even more fun than punching Nazis? Running them through with a sword.”

“Oh god, I just realised I’ve introduced the two fightiest people I know,” Tony says. “Should I have brought a suit?” He fiddles with his watch. “I’m putting a suit on standby.”

“Tony, you are not bringing a suit anywhere near this art,” Barnes says.

“Much as it pains me, I have to agree with him, Tony,” Steve says. “Also, you are way too injured to fight.”

“Yeah, Tony, he’s right,” Barnes says, glancing over at Steve from under his lashes, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

Steve can’t handle that look. “You shouldn’t be displaying this, if it’s a terrorist magnet,” he says to Barnes. “You could be putting innocent lives in danger.”

“Its status as a terrorist magnet is, if you’ll excuse the pun, the point,” Barnes counters, and now his voice is all steel. “Besides, I’m the only person who can handle the sword, so the only life in danger is mine, and I’m hardly innocent.” He catches Steve’s look of disdain, and reaches forwards with his flesh hand to what must be a palm lock on the display case. It hums as bolts are withdrawn, then it swings open. “You’re welcome to try if you don’t believe me, Captain Rogers. But I warn you, it’ll give you a nasty burn. Not the friendliest of artifacts.”

Steve slowly reaches his hand towards the sword — he’s going to touch it, just to spite Barnes — when he hears something, very faint. Footsteps. On the roof.

He withdraws his hand and steps away, looking up. A dozen men. Combat boots. “Barnes,” he says. “They’re here.”

“Oh, lovely,” Barnes groans, reaching past Steve and grabbing the sword. “My apologies. I thought they would have the good grace to wait until after dark. Captain Rogers, get Tony out of here.”

“I’m fine. I’m calling a suit,” Tony says.

“You’re not fine,” Barnes replies, his tone sharp.

“Have it bring my shield,” Steve adds.

“Tony,” Barnes warns him, drawing the sword. There’s an odd shiver of light around it, like a low tongue of white flame. “You’re injured. This is not your fight. Get outside, get your suit and if you have to do anything, cut off their retreat.”

Tony opens his mouth to argue, but as he does there’s an almighty crunch of a roof door being kicked in and then the heavy tread of combat boots on the floor above.

“Now, Tony. Go,” Barnes says, pointing to the fire exit with the sword. “You need a weapon? I have—“

“Oh ye of little faith,” Tony frowns at Barnes as he presses a button on his walking stick. It unfolds, reforming around his arm as a matte-black repulsor gauntlet. “I’m good, kid.” He heads towards the stairs.

Steve grabs Barnes’ arm and tries to propel him after Tony, towards the fire exit. “You’re a civilian. You get him outside. I’ll take care of this.”

“Don’t be stupid, Captain,” Barnes says, glaring down at where Steve is touching him. “One of us is armed—“ he raises the sword— “and has a way to block bullets—“ he wiggles the fingers of his metal arm— “and the other one is you.”

Steve withdraws his hand. He knows he should formulate a response but he’s trying to handle the sensory input of soft velvet over hard muscle and also stop himself from reaching back to feel it again.

“Captain. Go take care of Tony. There’s probably another team coming up from the ground floor. I need you to deal with those.” Barnes gives him a gentle push. “Please. Don’t let them hurt Tony. Or my staff.”

“Who are they?” Steve says. Barnes’ metal hand is still on Steve’s chest; he should barely be able to feel it through the heavy wool of his uniform jacket, the gentle pressure of his fingers burns like a brand.

“Hydra,” Barnes replies. “Most likely.”

He growls at Barnes, knocks his hand away, and turns to run after Tony. The last he sees of Barnes, the man is casually taking off his suit jacket and draping it over the outstretched arm of a Greek sculpture.

Barnes is right: there are a half-dozen troops coming up the staircase, with a half-dozen more guarding the door and the tied-up forms of the foundation’s guards and curator. They’re the standard-issue retired spec-ops guys that Hydra loves to recruit: bull-necked White guys with crew cuts and fascist sympathies.

Steve pushes past Tony and barrels headfirst into the six men on the staircase. Barnes has him so wound up that it’s almost a pleasure to take out his frustrations with his fists. The men are armed with stun batons — some bright spark at Hydra must have worked out that destroying irreplaceable masterpieces with small-arms fire wouldn’t be good PR — and while they’d be deadly in a nice open space like the gallery floor, they’re almost useless in the narrow confines of the staircase. Steve gets zapped a couple times (and through the pain, hopes the electricity will zap some damn sense into him) but to be honest, the Hydra shock troops don’t stand a chance.

The six on the ground floor are a little harder, but Steve’s blood is up and he throws himself into the fight, barely feeling the blows they land on him. The first couple go down easy, but then the other four must share more than one brain cell amongst themselves because they team up, three holding him down while the fourth shocks him repeatedly. It’s not great, but he’s wrenching himself free when there’s the sound of a repulsor powering up and then the guy who’s shocking him flies across the room into the wall, smoke coming out of his chest.

Steve surges up and knocks two of the remaining goons’ heads together, dropping them, and the final man is backing up and shifting his tongue around in his mouth, rooting around for that suicide tooth and God dammit he has a swastika tattoo on his neck and Steve just says, “Son, you’re not getting away that easily” and drives his fist into the man’s face. He drops like a bag of dirty laundry.

“How are you doing,” says Tony from the landing, lowering the hand that’s encased in the repulsor gauntlet.

“Fine,” Steve says, a little breathless and sweaty. “Thanks for the assist.”

“You’re in a mood,” Tony says as he hobbles down the final flight of stairs.

“I am,” Steve admits. “Good day for a fight.”

Tony arches an eyebrow. “Is it ever a _bad_ day for a fight with you?”

Steve just grins at him, tasting blood on his lip. “My shield outside?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Go back and take care of the kid. I like the kid, okay? Play nice.” He pushes past Steve and opens the door. One of his remote Iron Man suits is on the other side, Steve’s shield on its back. The suit hands Steve his shield, then disassembles, reassembling around Tony in a process that still gives Steve a little thrill of fascination, even after all this time. “That’s better,” comes Tony’s faintly metallic voice from inside the Iron Man suit. He salutes, then takes off into the sky. “See you back at the ranch.”

Steve frees the museum staff, who are unhurt although somewhat in shock. The first word out of the lady curator’s mouth is, “Mr Barnes?”

Steve shakes his head and can’t stop the smile that spreads over his face. “Upstairs, with a sword, being stupid.”

The woman full-on eyerolls. “Why can’t he run away from trouble like a normal person,” she sighs. Then, to Steve: “Please.”

Steve nods. “I’m on my way. I’m going to call a SHIELD clean-up crew but in the meantime, if any of these idiots move, use those batons to shock ‘em good.”

The curator gets to her feet, helped by one of the guards. She’s still a bit shaky. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Mr Barnes is convinced that you can fix anything with duct tape and cable ties, so we have a good supply of both in the office. None of these men will be going anywhere.”

Steve heads back up to the fourth floor, taking the steps two at a time. When he reaches the gallery, he has fleeting impressions of Barnes like a cornered wolf, snarling over the bodies of three of the strike squad, the rest circling him, waiting for an opening. They’re good; co-ordinated, and they know they have the numbers to wear Barnes down. He already looks exhausted, hair a touselled mess, a charred mark on the sleeve of his snowy-white shirt. His eyes flick up and meet Steve’s, and on that momentary distraction two soldiers lunge forwards, using their stun batons like blades to engage Barnes’ sword, while two more try to full-on tackle him from behind.

Steve’s shield is out of his hands before he even thinks, crashing into the ribs of the closest guy trying to tackle Barnes; he screams and is knocked into the second one by the force of the shield, and whoops, maybe Steve threw it a bit hard because the shield rebounds off the man’s shattered ribs straight towards the rightmost painting in the Twombly tryptich—

—and Barnes catches the shield in his metal hand and Steve’s heart stops beating for what feels like a solid minute because _who does that_, nobody has ever done that—

“Watch the art, asshole,” Barnes snarls as he swings the shield like an executioner’s axe into the necks of the two men trying to attack him from the front and the remaining five back the hell away and Barnes takes that little opening to fling the shield back at Steve—

—And Steve’s still so shocked he barely catches it, with both hands, and the force of the impact pushes him back a couple feet, and his brain is still going _what_—

Barnes is pacing towards the remaining five soldiers, his voice like a rusty blade. “We can finish this, or you can run away to your masters and tell them to leave me alone. The choice is yours.” Then he grins. “I’m nowhere near done, so bring it on if you value your lives that cheaply.”

Steve knows Hydra. He knows that the punishment for mission failure is far worse than dying on mission. The soldiers know it too, and he can see the moment they decide that attacking Barnes is the lesser of two evils. “I got left; you take right,” Steve calls out as he runs into the fight.

Barnes swivels and suddenly they’re back to back, Steve using his shield and fists; Barnes his sword and his metal arm (the sound of him grabbing and splintering a stun baton purely on grip strength alone doesn’t go straight to Steve’s dick, at all) and it’s exhilarating, somehow they’re able to read each other and stay out of each other’s way, attacking perfectly in sync and the fight is over too soon, Steve could do this all day—

Barnes steps away from him; Steve immediately misses the warmth at his back. “Ah,” the man says after he catches his breath, and Steve turns to find Barnes’ eyes downcast, almost bashful. “I’m sorry I yelled at you when you saved my life earlier,” Barnes says. Then he continues, softer, embarrassed. His cheeks pink and it makes something twist in Steve’s gut, the urge to reach out to him almost unbearable. “I know you think I’m a rich fool, but I really do care about these,” he gestures at the art on the walls. “More than anything else.”

“That’s not foolish,” Steve breathes.

Barnes smiles at him, then, a smile just for him, and it makes Steve’s heart skip again. “So for future reference, if it’s a choice between me and the Twombly, save the painting.”

“Duly noted,” Steve replies, not able to help the answering smile that spreads over his face.

Barnes replaces the sword in ints scabbard and locks the whole thing safely back in its display case. He looks around the room, at the bodies on the floor, and then down at himself. “What a mess,” he mutters, and Steve isn’t sure if he’s referring to the state of the gallery or his own dishevelled appearance.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” says Steve, laying down his shield and walking over to the statue of Venus currently serving as a coatrack for Barnes’ jacket and tie.

“I didn’t mean to get you and Tony involved in this,” Barnes says, as Steve carefully picks up Barnes’ velvet jacket and his tie. “That wasn’t the purpose of my inviting you here. Tony said you liked art, and didn’t want to come to the gala opening…”

“So you were just going to take on, what, two dozen Hydra cadres by yourself?” Steve asks.

“Well, when you put it like that, it just sounds stupid,” Barnes grumbles. He’s trying to fix his hair and making more of a mess of it and Steve has to actively quash the warmth spreading out from his heart. Then Barnes looks up at Steve. “People come for me a lot, Captain Rogers. Sometimes with words; sometimes with guns. I’m used to it. Just... not used to having help.” Barnes looks down again, almost ashamed, and fiddles with the silk knots at his French cuffs, trying to re-attach them one-handed. He startles, just a little, when Steve takes over, sliding the little knots easily through the buttonholes of the cuffs.

“Red and green?” Steve asks, unexpectedly charmed by the mismatched colours of the cufflinks.

“Port and starboard,” Barnes says, his voice almost a whisper. Steve feels like he’s cornered a feral animal, like Barnes might pull away at any moment.

Next Steve takes Barnes’ tie and loops its silken length around his neck; tucks it under his collar. “_Oh_,” Barnes says, and it’s like a little breath of surrender, the tension in his body easing visibly when he realises what Steve is doing. As Steve begins to loop the tie, Barnes’ metal hand rests gently on his, stopping him. “A Windsor knot, please,” Barnes breathes.

“I don’t know how,” Steve whispers back.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Barnes says, gently taking Steve’s hands in his and manipulating them to form the loops on the sides of the main knot, then the knot itself. A lock of Barnes’ hair falls forwards, brushing against Steve’s cheek, and Steve realises they’re almost touching foreheads. Barnes smells like steel and a spicy, leathery musk.

Then Steve switches his grip so he’s holding Barnes’ hands, guiding them into the sleeves of his suit jacket, and pulling the jacket up over his shoulders, adjusting it to sit perfectly, buttoning it up. The front button on each sleeve is unbuttoned, presumably to show that it can be, and Steve can’t tell any more if he loves or hates that exceptionally subtle bit of ostentation.

Steve smooths his hands down the front of the velvet jacket, skimming the firm muscle beneath, then around to Barnes’ sides, making sure the jacket drapes correctly.

“You know,” Barnes says, the hint of a shiver in his voice, “when most people get this close to me, they’re trying to take my clothes _off_.”

“Mm,” Steve hums, brushing a piece of lint off Barnes’ shoulder. “I have a very particular set of kinks.”

“I wish to learn them,” Barnes says, lifting his wide grey eyes to Steve’s.

And this is where Steve in his mind had planned to say something devastating and walk away, leaving Barnes wanting, but Barnes’ hair was an adorable disaster and before he could think about it his fingers were in those silky, touselled locks, straightening them, tucking them behind his ears.

“All better,” Steve says, and then he notices there’s a bit of blood — someone else’s blood — on one of Barnes’ sharp cheekbones. “No, wait.” He licks the pad of his thumb and Barnes’ grey eyes darken, and isn’t that a revelation, to be wanted as badly as he wants, and he reaches out and rubs the mark off. “There. Perfect,” he breathes, and Barnes leans into his hand like a cat.

Steve’s dick makes a motion that perhaps Steve could make a temporary exception to his anti-bourgeois stance for reasons of the hot rich guy having just taken down a bunch of Nazis armed with nothing but a sword and a bad attitude.

The motion carries.

Steve sinks his fingers into the hair at the back of Barnes’ neck and wraps his other hand around the man’s firm, wiry waist and pulls him in. He bites at those sullen, pouty lips and they open for him immediately and then they’re kissing, Barnes’ slim, strong body held against his, Steve having to tilt his head down only slightly, and the heat of it, Steve is dizzy with it, and he tells himself it’s both a first and a last kiss, to seal off this ridiculous infatuation with a goddamn billionaire, to bury it forever.

But God, Barnes’ mouth, it should be on a list somewhere as the eighth deadly sin. Steve can’t even imagine what it would be like if he could get Barnes on his knees with those lips wrapped around Steve’s—

—No, not thinking about that. Steve digs his fingers into Barnes’ waist a little harder, trying to banish the image, but all it does is force Barnes to arch against him, making sweet, hungry little noises into his mouth that Steve eats up like candy, pushing for more.

Just a little longer, Steve thinks, melting into it. It’s rude to rush a funeral.

It’s Barnes who breaks the kiss, in the end. He tips his forehead against Steve and says, “I didn’t think you liked me.”

“I don’t,” Steve confesses, and dives back in to kiss him again. But Barnes stills him with a finger on his lips.

“Steve,” he whispers. “Believe me, if I could, I’d kiss you all day. But… I can’t do this with someone who hates me.” He steps back, and Steve immediately misses his warmth, the solid line of his body. Barnes’ face takes on a melancholy cast, and he gestures at the bodies in the room. “I, uh, have a lot going on and… I’m in a lot of therapy, because of what happened. I can’t be more or less than I am, and I’m sorry that what I am is something you despise.” He steps further away and turns, his mismatched hands linked behind his back, and crosses to one of the gallery’s huge windows. “Good evening, Captain Rogers, and thank you again for your help. It was nice to meet you.”

Steve blinks. He feels a fresh rush of fury at Barnes’ presumption, at his ability to walk away first, perfectly unruffled, in his perfect suit, as if he felt nothing. He wants to shake up this man’s composure, wants to make him beg, even as a tiny part of him admits that Barnes is right: Steve isn’t doing this because he wants anything long-term with Barnes. That would be patently insane. Dating a billionaire, as Captain America, would just feed into his country’s toxic infatuation with the super-rich as actually having deserved their wealth. He knows Barnes hasn’t worked a day in his life, he achieved his massive fortune merely by the act of being born. And even though he’s almost painfully attracted to Barnes, Steve is honest enough to admit to himself that he’s doing this at least in part because it’s fun to drag pretty rich things through the dirt.

Barnes doesn’t turn around, but as Steve’s feet hit the metal treads of the stairwell, he hears Barnes call after him. “And wear a helmet, asshole.” The fondness in his voice hits Steve like a knife between the ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have too many deadlines to be posting fic right now but folks on twitter, [you know who you are and what you did](https://twitter.com/catswrites/status/1186663878521970693?s=21), this is your fault.
> 
> This fic will probably have three chapters. Buckle up, buttercups: we earn our E rating next chapter.
> 
> Title from [TeaMarr’s ridiculously catchy song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV99FHsC3oc), my favourite summer bop.
> 
> Everything said about morons on Citibikes in this chapter is 100% fact, I nearly got my arm broken when some idiot whipped round a van while facetiming his friends on his Citibike. Also, the Barnes Foundation is based on the Brandt Foundation building in the East Village, which is stunning — anyone who saw their Basquiat exhibit will know. (There is also a real-life Barnes Foundation museum outside Philadelphia, which is petty great, worth the drive, &c.)
> 
> It is very much A Thing to leave the front sleeve button of a bespoke suit or jacket unbuttoned to show that you can. 
> 
> Also, would you like links to examples of the art in the notes, or are you happy just going on a fun little google discovery journey of your own?


	2. I Dare You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two dumbasses double down, and Leon Trotsky’s name is taken in vain.

Steve googles Barnes. He’s only human. It’s intel, he tells himself. A proper commander must know his enemy. There are surprisingly few photos of the man; he clearly makes an effort to stay out of the public eye. Mostly, it’s news articles about the kidnapping, but even those are just spun as a snatch-and-grab for ransom rather than a Hydra plot. He even digs up the article about teenage Barnes finding the sword, and mourns a little for the happy, goofy boy with both his arms clutching a muddy blade with fierce pride.

Not that he’ll ever see Barnes again. They don’t exactly move in the same circles, and Steve is more than happy to keep it that way. He’s not sure where to compartmentalise his adrenalin-fuelled foolishness after the fight in the gallery so he just… ignores it, hoping that persistent thread of attraction will eventually wither, like one of Natasha’s houseplants.

He’s not been checking out bike messengers on the street, or running the Westside a little later than his usual dawn run, either. Those would be the actions of a man not in control of himself or his traitorous libido. He’s just been getting up a little bit later, that’s all. Sam’s always telling him to be nicer to himself and that’s what he’s doing.

Tony offers once to put him in touch with Barnes, and Steve’s snort of derision ensures there’s no second offer. But when Natasha sidles up and proposes to set him up with yet another girl from the Stark Industries support staff, Steve snaps and finally tells her he prefers men. The surprise in her eyes is worth it, so he carries on, the words flowing out of him before he can stop them. “Specifically brunets. Fit. Well-dressed. Good bone structure. No Trump supporters.”

Unfortunately, there are two things Natasha Romanov never does: water her plants, and back down from a challenge.

The first guy is way too muscular.

The second is too thin; too short.

The third one’s suit is awful and he agrees with everything Steve says, looking at him like he’s hung the moon and Steve makes it through one awkward drink before claiming Avengers business and fleeing.

He thought that going on dates would be enough of a distraction from the remembered feel of Barnes’ mouth on his, hot and dirty, and how right his waist felt in Steve’s broad hands, but as it turns out, he needs a distraction from his distraction.

He finds it in the most unexpected way: a barista at the Stark Tower coffeeshop makes some particularly awesome latte art of his shield, and then asks if she can photograph it for her instagram. Steve agrees, and that leads to him checking out her IG and seeing that she mostly uses it to show off life drawings in a variety of media.

He follows her, which causes her to squeak in shock, and then asks her where she goes to school for art. “I don’t,” she laughs. “Those are just from open sketch classes around the city. I just drop in when I have time.”

“What.” Steve says.

“Yeah, Art Students League is where I usually go. It’s closest to here, the models are great, and it’s only about eight bucks a class,” she explains.

Steve remembers when he used to draw, and suddenly misses it, the space that it left in his life aching like a phantom limb. He grills the girl, Elizabeth, and she takes him through all the art places she knows in Manhattan and eventually steers him towards a little private studio on the Soho / East Village borders, Minerva’s. Elizabeth describes it as small and discrete, full of oldskool Soho artists who all know each other and are all intimidatingly good. “It’s why I stopped going there,” she giggles. “But yeah, if there’s one place that isn’t going to freak out over Captain America dropping into a sketch class, it’s Minerva. She’ll probably treat you like a minor nuisance, to be honest.”

Steve thanks her and drops a $50 in the tip jar, “for art supplies”. He orders his own art supplies as he takes the lift back to his apartment, feeling optimistic for the first time in a while about just getting to be a person, doing a thing he enjoys. His drawing pad, pencils and charcoals say they’ll arrive on Saturday, and there’s a session on Sunday morning. Perfect.

He shoots an email to Minerva to warn her he’s hoping to attend, barring Avengers business, and to make sure his presence is okay with her. She messages back, “when you walk through the studio door, you’re an artist, not an Avenger, and welcome to class,” and Steve likes her already.

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

Steve walks right past the unmarked studio door the first time around, and has to double back. He’s there early, of course, because he always plans extra time when heading into unfamiliar territory. The door’s nondescript, across from a little café, between a Chinese grocery store and a nail salon, and after he triple-checks the street number on his phone, he buzzes in.

The studio is up a short flight of stairs and it’s small, maybe able to seat fifteen artists if they really squeeze, but it feels airy because of the high ceiling. There’s a raised platform at one end for the model, and the place smells like every art studio Steve has ever been in: charcoal and graphite and turpentine. It feels like home, and Steve inwardly curses himself for not getting around to this sooner. There are a couple artists there already, grabbing easels and setting up as they chat to a petite older woman with a wild nest of grey hair twisted up into an untidy bun. That, Steve thinks, must be Minerva. Steve’s in his usual civilian mufti of baseball cap and hoodie, and he nods politely to Minerva as he chooses a seat against the end wall, with a view of the room and all its exits.

The room fills up until there’s barely an empty place. Steve somewhat regrets his choice of seat since he’s now wedged in and won’t be able to get up without disrupting several other artists. There’s no sign of the model yet, which has Minerva clucking her tongue unhappily, but there are still a few minutes before the session is supposed to begin and Sunday subway service is notoriously awful. Maybe one of the main lines from Brooklyn is suspended, again.

At the last moment, there’s the clatter of a bike being brought up the stairs and Steve assumes it’s the model.

It is not the model.

It is Bucky Goddamn Barnes, looking like he just rolled out of bed. Steve’s 2B pencil snaps in his hand. Barnes is in a old, oversized striped mohair sweater, its collar loose and frayed and dragging down over one shoulder, snags in the loose knit revealing he’s not wearing a shirt underneath. He’s got equally old, slim, paint-spattered sweatpants on his bottom half, hugging his thighs, pushed up over those muscular biker’s calves. There are circles under his eyes, his hair is a disaster, his metal arm is on display for everyone to see. He is hands down the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen.

Steve glimpses a bare, brown nipple through the sweater’s loose knit as Barnes settles into his seat and his brain bluescreens for an entire minute.

Barnes doesn’t see Steve in his rush to get settled, apologising profusely to Minerva as he digs his drawing things out of his messenger bag. “Well, I hope the party was worth it,” Minerva teases.

“What?” Barnes blinks, still a little dumb with sleep. “Oh! No, no, I caught the red-eye back from Scandinavia last night.” He waves his flesh hand, blushing. “No parties. Just my usual boring insurance work. Consulting on how to safely store a Nordic antiquity.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. Boring insurance consulting, his ass. The knuckles of Barnes’ right hand are swollen and split, and he’s got a cut on his temple, the kind you get when you’re punched by someone wearing a ring.

The bleach-blonde White girl next to Barnes quietly asks him if he likes art and then, after Barnes’ affirmative hum, starts going on to him about how he _must_ visit the new Barnes Foundation exhibit, it’s _sooo uhmaaaazing_, and Barnes nods and smiles and asks her what her favourite pieces were, and Steve can’t look any more, he stares down at his pad and covertly shakes the broken splinters of pencil out of his palm, cursing his super-soldier hearing for being able to pick up every word of their conversation.

How _dare_ Barnes exist in Steve’s presence, in _that_ sweater, with _that_ face. It is absolutely unfair to have to cope with… with God dammit, he can _still_ see Barnes’ nipple, on a _Sunday_, when even the Lord rested, and why doesn’t he pull that sweater up to cover his shoulder, there are _normal people here_ just trying to have a morning.

Steve’s dick points out that Barnes is not wearing an expensive suit this time and might in fact be more hot without it and _how’s your socialist utopia now, Leon Blueballs Trotsky._

Steve chooses not to even dignify that with a response. He stares out the studio’s grimy window, aggressively. It’s a beautiful view of air shaft. The brick wall it faces holds no answers for him.

There’s a beep from Minerva’s phone, and she sighs. “Ladies and gentlefolk, Roseanne’s had to cancel. She’s stuck on New Jersey Transit.” There’s a chorus of sympathetic groans from the assembled artists, and then Minerva says, “well, it looks like we’re not going to have a session, unless one of you is willing to fill in as model.”

There’s some awkward shuffling and then, after a moment, Barnes’ voice: “Honestly I’m too tired to draw well today, so as long as you all promise not to put any sketches on the internet, I’ll model.”

Steve stands up so fast his folding wooden chair falls over with a loud crash. “No. I will,” he says. He takes off his baseball cap and runs his hand through his hair, doing his best aw-shucks-Captain-America face. “I, uh, actually used to do a lot of it back in the day, in exchange for free entry to art classes.”

There’s a stunned silence in the room as everyone realises who Steve is at the same time.

Barnes, however, looks infuriatingly composed. He shrugs and says, “Be my guest. My arm’s a chore to draw anyway, I’m sure everyone will be quite glad not to have to cope with it.”

Minerva gestures towards the model stand. “Well, Mister Rogers—“ Barnes snorts— “we’ll start with ten one-minute poses, then two fives. You’re comfortable posing nude, I presume?”

Steve looks right at her (well, he might be looking at Barnes, next to her, but nobody can prove it) as he unzips his hoodie and peels off his shirt.

Once on the stand he toes out of his shoes and turns his back to the room, shoving down his jeans and boxers in one go.

“First pose,” Minerva calls, and Steve turns directly towards Barnes and stares at him, and if he flexes a little more than is strictly necessary, that’s between him and God. Barnes stares back, a little stunned, and his pencil doesn’t touch his pad for the whole minute. _Good_, Steve thinks. _Now you know how it feels_.

Minerva calls the change of pose, and Steve turns his back to Barnes, dropping into a _contrapposto_ that he knows makes the muscles of his ass look fabulous. It’s oddly relaxing, the posing, and the scratch of pencils and charcoal on paper is the best white noise he knows.

On the next pose he turns back around to check in on his effect on Barnes.

Barnes looks right at him and _yawns_.

Steve wants to clench his fist but he can’t, he’s hit pose and he has to hold it.

Barnes stands up and stretches, and he’s backlit and Steve can see the slim lines of his body through that barely-there sweater and then he leans over to Minerva and asks her if she wants a coffee.

Steve’s body is right in his face, a body that is _literally scientifically proven to be perfect_, and Bucky _Fucking_ Barnes is yawning and wandering out for coffee. Steve’s face flushes with rage.

“Um, excuse me, your head was, uh, that way?” says the girl Barnes had been talking to earlier. “And your hands were looser.”

Steve comes back from where he was glaring at Barnes ambling away down the stairs to the street. “Oh, sorry,” he mumbles, and then Minerva calls the change of pose.

The thing is, Steve could maybe have really enjoyed this morning. He’s using his body for something that’s not violence, and he’s in an art studio, his long-ignored happy place. But also, while the joy of art modelling is that it doesn’t feel generally sexualised, he was quite hoping to specifically sexualise it towards one James Buchanan Barnes, accidental bane of Steve’s existence.

Yet Barnes spends the rest of class sipping a giant coffee, looking bored as he sketches, and occasionally chatting about nothing at all to Minerva and the girl next to him. Minerva leans over a couple times and corrects his anatomy or perspective, and that’s all. Then Barnes’ phone vibrates early in the last 20-minute pose, and he excuses himself and leaves.

Steve doesn’t know what to think. Other than that he wants to strangle Barnes. He stripped naked in front of the man and Barnes yawned, ignored him and then left early. As little as Steve thought before he volunteered, he expected this to be something triumphant, making Barnes feel bad for walking away from him before he could walk away from Barnes. But instead, it’s left him feeling furious, awkward and embarrassed.

He dresses again and does his best to politely dodge the flustered thanks and small talk from the artists who drew him. He’s about to make his own escape when Minerva stops him. She thanks him and tries to pay him the modelling fee, but Steve tells her to give it to charity. “Oh, there’s one more thing,” Minerva says, and hands him a folded sheet of drawing paper. Steve assumes it’s one of Minerva’s own drawings until he opens it.

It’s a sketch by Barnes, of Steve from the back. The first thing he notes is that Barnes is actually a pretty good artist. The second thing he notes is that across the top, in beautiful calligraphic script, is lettered _Nice try — Too obvious_. The third thing he notes is that on Steve’s lovingly graphite-rendered ass is stamped _Property of the Barnes Collection _in red ink.

Steve has never been so furious in his entire life. Not even the Red Skull made him this mad.

He stalks out, on a mission, not particularly sure where he’s going but pretty sure what’s going to go down once he gets there, and is brought to an almost immediate halt halfway across the road, because there’s Barnes sitting in the café holding another coffee, grinning at him like he was waiting for Steve’s reaction this entire time and it had delivered 110%. He raises his cup in salute.

Nobody outmaneuvers Steve Rogers.

Steve marches up to Barnes and slowly tears the sketch in two in front of him.

“Aw,” Barnes pouts. “That was some of my best work.”

Steve crumples it up. With extreme prejudice. And drops it in Barnes’ coffee cup.

Barnes sighs and leans back in his chair, folding his arms. The crook of one elbow perfectly frames the nipple that is now somehow poking through the knit of the sweater and Steve can barely think over how loud his dick is shouting about the Third Way and the importance of reaching across the aisle. Or, indeed, the table.

“Did you buy that sweater like that?” Steve blurts.

“Don’t be absurd. I’ve had it since college,” Barnes replies, and there’s the condescension in his tone that really gets Steve’s blood boiling. “What do you want from me, Rogers?” Barnes asks, his voice husky.

Steve snarls, unable to corral his feelings, all broken glass and burning sparks, into anything more coherent than a wolf’s warning growl.

Barnes sits forward again, rolling his hand around in the universal circular motion for _speed it up, bozo_. “In the short term, Rogers.” Steve grips the edge of the café table so hard his fingers begin to deform the aluminium. “Use your words,” Barnes says.

Steve knows he can mess with Barnes’ ice-cool composure. He’s done it before, and he’s not going to leave until he does it again. So he leans on the table and gets his big, strong face real close to Barnes’ pampered, delicate one, and whispers, “I want to fuck you until tears run down those pretty cheeks and you beg me to stop because your body simply can’t come any more.”

Barnes’ eyes go black and he licks his lips, momentarily at a loss for words. _Victory_, Steve thinks.

Then the absolute bastard leans back in his chair and lazily crosses his legs, bouncing an ankle on his opposite knee. He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his calendar. Steve is going to kill him. “I might be able to fit you in, in about ten days. Thursday afternoon the 4th work for you?” he says.

“This is a one-time offer,” Steve says. “Now or never.”

Barnes pouts at him. “I’m a busy man, Rogers. My solid-gold toilets are being installed this afternoon, and afterwards I have to dash off and slaughter some peasants.”

Steve straightens up, chin out, and grabs his bag of art supplies. “Then never. Goodbye, Barnes.” He walks away, head held high.

He expects… he doesn’t know what he expects. Barnes to run after him, maybe. He won’t look backwards. He’s not that weak. He does listen for footsteps, though. Or the hum of a bicycle tyre.

But at his back he hears: nothing, but the sound of horns and motors.

As soon as he turns the corner, Steve allows his proud stroll to collapse into the petulant stomp it desperately wants to be. He tries to tell himself it’s just because he’s a sore loser, always has been, not because Barnes is anyone he actually wants. No. He can’t want someone like Barnes. Not that infernally smug playboy with his tattered sweater and God, Steve wanted to crawl across that table and lock his lips around Barnes’ nipple and bite it until he _screamed_.

His dick starts humming the Internationale.

Steve stomps a little harder towards Canal Street.

He’s almost to the station when his phone buzzes. It’s a text from Tony, and Steve opens it without thinking.

_Barnes told me to tell you Plaza Hotel, 30 minutes???_

_CAPSICLE IS THAT A BOOTY CALL_

Steve stops so fast the tourists behind him almost smack into him, swearing at him in Cantonese as they swerve around him.

_NO!!!_ He replies.

He stares at the text message.

And he contemplates not going. He really does. Barnes absolutely deserves to be stood up, if nothing else for the extreme emotional whiplash he’s caused Steve in the space of less than three hours.

But also, that’s Barnes agreeing to be fucked until he cries and Steve, well, people forget that Steve is only human. Sometimes Steve himself forgets he’s human, and allowed to make terrible choices.

It doesn’t have to be any more than it is, he tells himself. He can get his fill of Barnes’ body and then all of this will be over.

He steps off the curb and flags down a taxi.

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

Barnes is late.

Steve is left feeling underdressed and awkward in the Plaza bar, nursing a whisky that does absolutely nothing for his nerves, and if after all this Barnes stands him up he will find this man’s house, or penthouse, consequences be damned.

Both his elaborate revenge fantasies and second whisky are interrupted twenty minutes later by Barnes, saying his name from behind him. Steve whirls around, ready to give Barnes a piece of his mind—

—and nearly chokes on his Macallan.

Barnes is in a three-piece suit, of an undefineable grey-green weave with a pale blue window-check plaid. It’s paired with a tattersall shirt and a rose silk-knit tie in his usual Windsor knot and his hair is tied back in a messy twist and Steve is going to _die_.

He wants to put his hands _all over_ Barnes.

“Sorry I’m late,” Barnes says. He gestures to himself. “Wanted to smarten up a bit.” Then he looks at Steve and that wry smile pulls at the corners of his lips again as he confesses, “I’m not sure how to say hello to you in public. My friends, I—… You’re not a friend.” His brow furrows. “Are you even out?”

“You can kiss me,” Steve stutters.

Barnes’ eyebrows lift fractionally and then his arm goes around Steve’s waist and he reels Steve in, kissing him open-mouthed and dirty in front of God and man and the entire Plaza bar. It’s quick, but it shakes Steve down to his bones. Barnes takes one of Steve’s hands and presses it against the line of his hip, before whispering into Steve’s mouth, “That’s the key to a suite in my pocket and yes, I’m glad to see you.”

“What are we waiting for?” Steve says, snaking his own hand around Barnes’ waist, feeling the sleek line of the wool suit jacket, so much softer than he’d expected.

Barnes leans across, steals Steve’s whisky, downs it, and then grins and shrugs, looking like the patron saint of mischief. Steve wants to ravish him.

“Let’s go, then,” Steve says.

Barnes glances up at him, serious, as they head towards the elevators. “I hope you don’t mind coming here,” he says. “I don’t want you to see my home. This isn’t… that kind of thing.”

Steve wants to lash out, to press Barnes about what kind of thing is it then, but… yeah. A home is personal. This isn’t a relationship. This is just a dare gone too far. They’re going to enjoy it, then they’re done.

Barnes leads them to a corner suite on one of the top floors, overlooking Central Park. The bedroom is opulent in understated shades of grey and silver, set into one of the Plaza’s corner towers with almost a 360–degree view of Manhattan, and the bed’s so big it could have its own zip code. Steve’s entire living room growing up was smaller than that bed. He shakes his head, trying to keep his anger at bay, that some people randomly get this, while other people starve, and the myth is perpetuated that it’s based on merit.

“What is it?” Barnes says, standing in the no man’s land between the door and the bed.

“This suite is beautiful, and it disgusts me,” Steve replies.

Barnes leans against the wall, his head lolling back, exposing the long column of his neck. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to set up an account at the Yotel.” His suit really is magnificent, from the polished brown brogues up to the high waistcoat. He’s got a dusky-pink carnation looped casually in one buttonhole, and an almost-matching pocket square. It’s just the right side of dandyish and fits the long slim sweep of his body without a millimeter to spare.

And he’s Steve’s, for the afternoon. All of him.

Steve gets up in his space and reaches in to mess up those already-touselled locks. But, just before his fingers sink into them, he pauses. “Anything I can’t do?” he asks.

“Absolutely no hands around my neck,” Barnes says. “I’ll get violent. And not in a fun way.”

“Noted,” Steve says. “Now go stand in the middle of the room, in front of the bed. I’m going to undress you.” And he hates how wrecked his voice sounds, how there’s already an obscene tent in his jeans just thinking about what he’s going to do to Barnes, but he doesn’t miss the hitch in Barnes’ breath as he pushes himself off the wall and does as he’s told (for once), so at least he’s not the only one affected.

Steve walks around him, contemplating what to take off first. He runs a finger under the collar of Barnes’ checked shirt, and flicks it up. Then he walks around to the front of Barnes and slowly, carefully reaches for his tie. “Since you don’t like things around your neck,” he rasps.

Barnes gulps, and nods, his pupils blown.

Steve has a perfect memory, and now that Barnes taught him how to tie a Windsor knot, he knows how to untie one too. The rose-pink silk tie slithers from around his neck with a low hiss, and Steve tosses it over a chair.

He runs fingers down Barnes’ pretty, pretty face next, over those cheekbones and that jaw, and down his neck to the top buttons of his shirt. Those go next, and Steve can’t help brushing his lips over the pulse he can see going rabbit-quick in Barnes’ neck.

He feels Barnes’ hand ghost over his side and growls, “I didn’t say you could touch.”

Barnes jerks his hand back like it was burnt.

“You’re being remarkably obedient,” Steve whispers, kissing up Barnes’ jaw. “I thought you were more of a brat.”

“Just waiting for an opening,” Barnes says, and there’s that smirk, he’d wondered where it had gone.

“Please. I’m a master tactitian,” Steve says.

“And yet here you are, in the Plaza, _my territory_, about to let me ride you like the Pony Express at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Sunday,” Barnes says.

“It was my idea,” Steve growls.

“Keep telling yourself that, Rogers. Still won’t make it true, though.”

Steve sinks his hand into Barnes’ messy hair and yanks, and the gasp he gets is more than worth it as he forces Barnes’ body back into an arch. He puts his other hand on Barnes’ crotch where— yes, the man is well on the way to hard— and _yes_, he’ll just help that along. “You really want your first orgasm to be all over the inside of those nice trousers?” Steve hisses. “Because we can do that, if you want. How hard is it to get come out of expensive wool like this, Barnes? You probably know.” He’s rubbing Barnes’ now rock-hard dick in earnest, now, through the soft wool of those trousers, and he manhandles Barnes around so his back is to Steve and they’re both facing the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door and Steve whispers, “look at you, you’re halfway wrecked already,” and it’s true, Barnes is shuddering against Steve’s back, pressing into him and making high little moaning sounds.

Barnes is vocal, but then of course he is. If you own a mansion, you can scream as loud as you want. Steve’s always had to be silent. Thin tenement walls, then army barracks or canvas tents. Sex was always something furtive, hidden. He’s had a few one night stands since coming out of the ice, but he hasn’t really dated, so he hasn’t lost the habit of secrecy.

Not that this is dating. No matter how good Barnes’ wiry little waist feels in his hands.

Even now he’s still acting like someone can overhear, hiding how fucking turned on he is by burying his face in Barnes’ neck and hissing his arousal into the man’s hot skin.

“Christ, I’m gonna—“ Barnes starts, and Steve grabs the base of the man’s cock, digging his nails in, and Barnes _howls_.

“Beg,” Steve orders.

Barnes’ face twists into a wicked smile. “I never begged when Hydra had me. No fucking chance you’re going to manage it unless you do a lot better.”

“Oh, I will, don’t you worry your pretty head,” Steve says, running his hands up and down the soft wool encasing Barnes’ body. “One question before I finish stripping you. I can’t catch, carry or transmit anything. You okay with bareback?”

“You’re determined to ruin this room, aren’t you?” Barnes says.

“Just you,” Steve replies, unbuttoning Barnes’ suit jacket and slipping it off him. “And the sheets.” He tosses the jacket on the same chair as Barnes’ tie, and takes a moment to just wrap his big hands around Barnes’ chest in that slim waistcoat. Barnes’ nipples are already hard under the thin, soft wool, and Steve can’t wait to wreak his revenge on them for ruining his morning.

The waistcoat comes off next, and Steve makes sure to drag his nails across Barnes’ chest as he strips it off, earning the sweetest shuddering moan from the man. Then: “Take your shoes off.”

“I thought you were undressing me. _Sir_,” Barnes says, and Steve has met very few people in his life who could casually make _sir_ sound as much like an insult as Barnes can.

“So I was,” Steve says, and pushes Barnes down on the bed. Barnes makes a surprised squawk as he lands on his nice round ass, and then Steve sinks to one knee, flashing Barnes his own snarky grin as he takes one of Barnes’ feet in his hand and slowly unlaces and removes his brogue and then his aqua-blue socks. He chucks them over his shoulder and they land with a thunk on the rug of the foyer. The other shoe and sock follows swiftly after, and it’s a helluva view, Steve has to admit, Barnes sprawled on the bed, half-supported on his elbows, legs spread on either side of Steve and laid out, all for him. Steve leans forwards and slowly undoes Barnes’ button fly, massaging his cock as he goes, and then pulls his trousers off. Barnes is left in shirttails and boxer briefs and a slightly stunned expression.

Steve rests his elbows on Barnes’ knees and looks up at him. “Take your own shirt off. Slowly.”

Barnes nods, and his mismatched hands make short work of the buttons. His fine motor skills with the prosthetic are flawless, and it continues to captivate Steve. Steve reaches forwards and grabs that hand, and Barnes stills. Steve doesn’t give any warning as he takes Barnes’ metal index finger into his mouth, sucking it like he has something to prove. Barnes’ eyes widen and he whines, high and needy.

“So you have full sensation with it,” Steve says, giving his fingertips a kiss.

“Y-yeah,” Barnes says. “Except it cuts off above certain levels. Extreme temperature, pain, that sort of thing.”

“It’s beautiful,” Steve says. He reaches out and takes Barnes’ other hand, kissing the scarred and broken knuckles at the top of those long, artist’s fingers. “Both of them are.” His gaze travels up, to where Barnes’ bare chest is spread out under his unbuttoned shirt. “And this,” Steve says, pushing himself up and over Barnes and shoving his shirt down his arms, “these, distracting me all morning.” He reaches down and bites Barnes’ right nipple, hard. Barnes gasps, and Steve twists the other nipple in his fingers, pulling it hard. “That sweater should be illegal. You can’t just go out like that, Barnes.” He laves his tongue over one abused nipple, then the other, and Barnes is arching up into him and it’s so _good_, he puts his hands around the man’s bare waist (finally!) and pulls him in, kissing and biting his chest until he can feel Barnes under him, his hips twitching, trying to get friction on his cock.

Steve pulls away from him and shoves him further up the bed. His hands open and close at his sides, missing the feel of Barnes’ body, warm and sleek. “Start opening yourself up while I watch. There’s stuff—“

“—in the charming yet inevitable Duane Reade bag poking out of your NPR tote, I’ll guess,” Barnes says. The only clue that he’s rock-hard with a chest covered in bites is a slight breathlessness in his voice.

“I should gag you,” Steve says.

“Ah, no gags,” Barnes says. “That also would incite punching first and questions later, sorry to say.” He lifts up his hips and pulls off his boxer briefs, and divests himself of his shirt. “Generally I can’t do restraints of any kind with people I don’t trust. Besides,” he says, wiggling the fingers of his metal arm, “most of the time I just break through them.”

Steve almost can’t bear how fond he is of Barnes in that moment, of how brave he is, and how brave he’s been for a very long time. But Barnes mistakes the look on Steve’s face for something else, blushing and avoiding his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Steve, it’s that I don’t trust _anyone_. Don’t take it personally.” He grins then, but there’s something brittle about it, as he leans across the bed to grab the bottle of lube. “But yeah, sorry. _Damaged goods_ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Steve is crawling onto the bed before he can overthink it, reaching out to pull Barnes into a hug. “No, it’s—“

But Barnes shoves him away, lifting his chin, his eyes glittering defiantly. “Don’t pity me, Rogers. I have certain no-fly zones, that’s all.”

They blink, and stare at each other, the mood cooling by the moment, and Steve means to say _do you still want to do this_ but what actually comes out of his mouth is, “I hate cold water.”

Barnes shoots him a confused look.

Steve stares down at his hands, twisting them. “Can’t stand it,” he carries on. “We were on a mission last month and I went for a shower afterwards and it was ice cold and nobody warned me. I had a full-fledged panic attack, in some disgusting military-base locker room in Northern China. I… I don’t understand why anyone wants to go into cold water. It’s the worst.” _What the hell is he doing_, he thinks to himself, as he starts digging his nails into the back of his other hand. He’s never confessed that to _anyone_, not his therapist, not his teammates. Nobody. And here he is, babbling it to Bucky Goddamn Barnes—

—Who leans against him, quiet and warm and solid, and after a moment says only, “Life fucks you up.”

“That it does,” Steve says. He unclenches his hands from around each other and leans into Barnes too, turning towards him, and their arms move around each other, loose and slow, and Steve ends up with his head on Barnes’ flesh shoulder.

“Who found you,” Barnes whispers. “In the shower room.”

“What?” Steve says. “Oh. Nobody. I got through it, dried off, went out again.”

Barnes’ arms circle him tighter, and Steve stiffens. “I don’t want your pity either,” he says.

“Shut up and take the hug, asshole,” Barnes says, loosening one arm long enough to smack him gently upside the back of his head. “It’s for how much it sucks to be alone at times like that.” Then he hugs Steve again, a little tighter.

Steve wants to fight back and say _it was fine, no big deal_, but he thinks about it, grounded in the warm, strong circle of Barnes’ mismatched arms, and admits, “it did suck. It sucked a lot. I wasn’t okay.”

He sinks into Barnes’ embrace, shivering a little in remembered terror as he lets it go, and Barnes kisses him on the forehead. “We killed the mood,” Barnes says. His lips are still pressed against Steve’s brow and Steve can feel that he’s smiling, and that for some reason makes him smile too.

“Yeah, we did,” Steve says. “Where’s your tactics now, Barnes?”

“Oh _NOW_ it’s my problem?” Bucky says, drawing back from the hug to make a face at him, and Steve already misses his warmth.

“Well you did claim to have set this up,” Steve says. “Which means this mission is your responsibility.”

Barnes sighs. “Here’s the thing. I can’t plan for shit but I can improvise like you couldn’t believe.” He squints at Steve and tilts his head, assessing. It’s ridiculously cute. “Hmmm. Start slow?” Barnes plucks at his jeans. “Maybe begin with you getting naked too. These jeans can’t be comfortable.”

“Seems fair,” Steve says. He slides out of his sweatshirt and carries on down, unzipping his jeans and working his way out of them, shoving his sneakers off at the same time he pushes his jeans down over his ankles.

When he looks up again, he almost swallows his tongue.

Barnes has tucked a pillow under his hips, and is opening himself up with two lube-drenched metal fingers, his face flushed, and his lids half-closed in pleasure.

“Thought I’d give you some— _nnf!_— inspiration,” Barnes rumbles.

“I am. Very inspired,” Steve chokes, reaching down to cup his own erection which has come thundering back so fast he’s not sure if there’s any blood left in the top part of his body.

Steve sits half on the bed and half off, resting his chin in his hand and watching Barnes add a third finger. He strokes himself lazily, trying not to get too aroused, too fast. It’s a battle, and he’s losing. Steve Rogers isn’t used to losing.

“You just come here to watch?” Barnes says.

“It’s a good view,” Steve replies.

“Mine’s not bad either, but it’s time for the close-up,” Barnes teases. He bats the bottle of lube at Steve, who catches it and slicks himself up.

Steve lifts himself onto the bed, supporting most of his weight on his arms so Barnes can watch them flex and then later regret what he’ll never get to have again. He runs a big hand up Barnes’ right leg, from his surprisingly delicate ankle to his muscular thigh, and then throws that leg over his shoulder.

He looks down at Barnes spread out for him over crisp white hojillion-threadcount cotton sheets, so pretty, and so perfectly at home in this obnoxiously luxurious room. “This is both the best and worst decision I’ve ever made,” he mutters to himself.

“Strong words from a man who once crashed a plane into the Arctic,” Barnes smirks.

“Two dozen Hydra cadres, by yourself,” Steve enunciates, lining himself up against Barnes’ hole.

Barnes rolls his eyes. “You’re so irritating—“

He cuts off with a strangled gasp, his eyes widening as Steve pushes into him, one hand on his hip, one hand on the underside of his thigh, slow, merciless, inexorable. Then his eyes flutter shut and he bites his lips, making tiny little sounds as Steve bottoms out.

He’s _so_ tight.

Steve exhales, tipping forward so his forehead rests against Barnes’, squeezing his eyes shut, digging his fingers into the muscle of Barnes’ thick thigh, trying not to come right then and there. He has… really not had enough sex recently.

Barnes digs the heel of his other leg into Steve’s ass, trying to pull him in deeper. Steve opens his eyes and Barnes’ face is a vision, eyes wide, expression pleading. What does it, though, is the high, broken little sound he makes. It’s not begging, but it’s close.  
  
Steve pulls out, not far, and thrusts in again and Barnes arches and keens. Feeling Barnes writhe underneath him as he thrusts is heaven, and the sounds the man is making—

—Steve decides to hell with slow. He’ll do slow later, once he’s gotten the edge off.

Once he’s ruined Barnes for other men.

He pulls out and snaps in again, but rather than give Barnes time to breathe, time to recover, he starts up a brutal pace, pounding into him. Barnes’ sullen lips open in an “O” of surprise and Steve shoves two fingers into them, making Barnes suck them, and then diving in to replace those fingers with his tongue.

“Touch yourself,” Steve orders, when he’s done plundering Barnes’ mouth.

Barnes nods, still making those involuntary little kitten sounds when Steve slams home, and he reaches down with his right hand but Steve says, “not with that one, with the other one” and Barnes glares at him and reaches down his metal fingers around his hard, leaking cock, steadying it from where it’s banging against his abs as Steve fucks him, and Steve can’t take his eyes off it, it’s so fucking hot, his cock just as long and pretty as the rest of him—

“Eyes are up here, asshole,” Barnes says, and Steve grabs all that long, silky hair and yanks and says “this would be so much better if you just stopped talking” and Barnes snarls at him through gritted teeth and says “if I’m still able to talk you’re not fucking me well enough” and that is IT.

Steve snaps his hips into Barnes so hard he drives the man a few inches up the bed. He loses his grip on Barnes’ hair and plants his arm right next to Barnes’ head. His other hand’s still locked around Barnes’ hip and the man’s almost certainly going to be carrying an imprint of Steve’s fingers for a week and it serves him absolutely right.

Barnes has bit his lip so hard he’s broken skin. There’s blood on his teeth and he’s grinning.

Steve hates him. He makes Steve’s chest feel like it wants to explode.

Barnes bows his back again on Steve’s next thrust, tipping his head back and looking inordinately pleased with himself as he gives his cock a few swift strokes with his metal hand and hisses _yesss_ and then comes, all over Steve’s stomach and his own, and his hole clenches even tighter down on Steve and Steve grunts and comes too and it’s like being hit by a freight train, everything goes white and he’s completely somewhere else for a long, effervescent, loopy moment, out of his body, drowning in pleasure.

He comes back to himself, slumping, but careful to hold his weight off Barnes.

Barnes stretches smugly beneath him, cock soft and spent, body loose and as contented as the cat who got the cream.

But then Barnes’ attention snaps back to Steve as Steve smiles and slowly rolls his hips.

“You’re still hard?” Barnes squeaks.

Now it’s Steve’s turn to grin. “The serum. First one only takes the edge off. How many times can you come, Barnes?”

“Uh,” Barnes says, all his eloquence gone as Steve begins to grind into him again.

Barnes’ eyes go wide, panicked, as he tries to pull away from Steve, to change the angle. “God, uh! I’m too sensitive—“ he cries.

“Should I stop?” Steve says, stilling for a moment.

Barnes is a mess. It’s gorgeous. Flushed and sweating and nervous. He shivers. “…No,” he says, looking at Steve like he’s some sort of miracle.

Steve smiles, brushing his lips over Barnes’ forehead as he starts fucking into him at a slower, more gentle pace. “Good boy.”

Barnes whines as Steve finds his rhythm, digging his nails in to Steve’s upper arms, legs slipping. His face is a picture, teeth worrying his pouty lower lip, wetness collecting at the corners of his eyelids as his breath comes in short little gasps. And he feels _amazing_ around Steve, his hole full of Steve’s come, the muscles of his walls quivering, tightening and loosening in irregular spasms. He keeps making those sounds, like a hurt, desperate little animal, as his slim, cut body writhes and flexes under Steve.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, and you’re taking it so well, baby,” Steve babbles, watching a tear slip down one of those sharp cheekbones. “I want to fuck you all the goddamn time, just keep you like this for me whenever I want it, wet and open and shaking, _sweetheart_—“

And Barnes is blushing at the praise, red-faced and embarrassed with tears coursing down his cheeks and his dick’s valiantly makinng the effort to get hard again. It _gets_ to Steve, the wet, raw way Barnes is looking at him, stripped down so there’s nothing left between them except this pure attraction, and he thrusts home hard and fast a few more times and he’s coming again and Barnes cries out in surprise and comes again too and he’s shaking, like he’s about to fall apart and Steve scoops him up and holds him, tucks Barnes’ wet face against his neck and holds him as Barnes sobs against him and Steve pets his hair and says, “ssh, sweetheart, you were so good, you did so good for me, you were perfect,” and Christ, Barnes was perfect, is perfect, fits perfectly against him.

There’s only one problem.

(Well, there’s an insurmountable gulf of problems, but there’s one big _immediate_ problem.)

“Baby,” Steve says, pulling Barnes’s hips down against him, “do you think you can go one last time?”

Barnes is beyond words. His face is a mess of tears and snot and he glares at Steve as he shifts his weight, feeling how Steve is hardening again inside him.

Steve brushes a thumb over Barnes’ cheekbone, wiping away his tears. “Sorry,” he says, “it’s been a while,” because he doesn’t want to say _it’s you, I can’t stop wanting you_.

Barnes lifts his chin and tighens his jaw and it’s a fighting look. He nods, small and tight, as his body is wracked with another involuntary shiver. The plates on his arm shiver too, resetting.

“I promise this is the last one,” Steve whispers, nuzzling the shell of Barnes’ ear with his lips. He manhandles the both of them around so that he’s sitting with his back against the headboard and all the pillows, and Barnes is facing him, straddling him, able to hold onto the headboard for support. He skates his hands up and down Barnes’ shaking flanks and says, “here, like this, so you can go at your own pace, sweetheart.”

Barnes lifts himself an inch off Steve then settles back down. It’s awkward and disjointed, as if he’s not quite in control of his own body. He does it a few more times, blinking, like he’s trying to focus on something far away that only he can see.

Then he shakes his head and one hand comes off the headboard and he runs his fingers along Steve’s cheek, his jaw. He looks Steve right in the eyes and then clenches down on him.

Steve sucks in a sharp breath, caught off-guard.

Barnes smiles dreamily then, and starts riding him, smooth and unhurried, experimenting with his angle until he leans back and moans to himself, a little distant, but clearly content.

Steve is transfixed. He thought he was using Barnes, was worried he was forcing Barnes into a third round, and here’s Barnes, using him for his own pleasure.

Barnes doesn’t even look at Steve, doesn’t even try to make it good for him. (It is, though. It’s _great_.) He just rides him like he’s a dildo set up for Barnes’ enjoyment, leisurely fisting his cock at the same time with his flesh hand, and trailing his metal one up and down his own chest, playing with his own nipples.

Steve can’t look away. His hands drift to Barnes’ hips, not controlling him, just going along with him, trying to be more connected to him.

Barnes tilts his head back and bows backwards some more, bouncing on Steve’s dick in short, sharp little movements, and they’re clearly hitting his prostate each time because of the little _ah ah ah _sounds punched out of him at the bottom of each stroke.

Steve starts thrusting up to meet him. He’s not going to last much longer—

Barnes smiles and says _nnnf_ and sits down hard and deep on Steve’s cock and he barely comes, just the smallest dribble, but his hole flutters in a vice-like staccato around him and Barnes pulls himself off Steve and just falls over to one side, utterly spent, utterly happy.

Steve strokes himself a few more times, staring at Barnes, and then comes over his chest. Barnes is either asleep or most of the way there, blissed out, and Steve reaches out, rubbing his come into Barnes’ waxed chest out of some primal need to mark him up, to claim ownership. He knows this is a one-time deal, but he wants Barnes to smell like him.

He stares down at the man snuggled against him, metal arm slung over his waist, hair cascading over the pillow. In his head, this is where he got up and left. It’s over, he got what he— _haha_— came for. But Barnes is so warm, and fits against him just right, and he thinks maybe he can hold Barnes, just for a little while. It’s not like the man will know if he leaves now or in half an hour.

Steve settles against Barnes, who rolls over and spoons into him, tuckiing that perfect ass into his crotch one more time while making happy, sleepy mumbles. Steve pulls him to his chest and shuts his eyes, so he can better imprint in his memory the feel of Barnes’ body against his, the smell of him.

When he opens his eyes, it’s dark out.

Steve sits up with a cry of dismay, dislodging Barnes, who had been sleeping on his chest.

Barnes yawns and stretches, his back cracking, and then rolls out of bed. “Gonna shower,” he mumbles. “Very sticky. Y’can come too, showers are massive.” He’s all squinty-eyed and puffy-faced from sleep, there’s a wrinkle from the pillow pressed into his cheek and his breath is awful and Steve shouldn’t want him as much as he does right now.

Steve presses his palms to his forehead. Why hadn’t he just gotten up. That was the plan. It was a good plan.

He can hear the shower go on. Barnes has left the door to the bathroom open, in invitation, but Steve lunges for the room phone instead.

When Barnes comes out about ten minutes later, hair slicked back, towel around his waist, Steve is dressed and standing in the foyer, bouncing on the balls of his feet with nerves.

Barnes flicks a glance at him from the sides of his eyes. “I’ll have you know you just missed out on getting blown in the shower.”

“I paid for the room,” Steve says.

Barnes sits down on the edge of the bed, his brows creasing in confusion. “Oh.” He blinks, suddenly finding the bland hotel carpet very interesting. “Huh. Everyone always expects me to pay. And, and I _chose_ this place.” Barnes puts his hands on his hips. “And wait, aren’t you a socialist?”

“I’d prefer not to owe you,” Steve says, jutting out his chin.

“Okay,” Barnes says. He smiles at Steve, and it’s soft, maybe the softest smile he’s ever gotten from Barnes, unsure and beautiful. “Thank you. I don’t often get treated.” He looks down at where he’s tracing figure eights in the bedspread with his index finger. “Next time I’ll pay.”

Steve almost smiles back, his lips forming the word _Sure_ as tendrils of weird sparkly warmth weave through his chest, more and more, until he’s filling up, overflowing with it—

—He freezes, as the enormity of what he’s done, and what he’s feeling, hits him.

Barnes sees his expression and deflates, just a little. “Or not,” he says, the cheer in his voice ringing hollow.

And then Steve grunts something unintelligible and flees.

He flees and has a panic attack in the Plaza’s ground-floor men’s room for twenty minutes straight about just how much, how _overwhelmingly_ much, he wants there to be a next time with Barnes.

Steve Rogers is terrified of drowning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [the Regrettes’ recent single “I Dare You”.](https://youtu.be/WOgQpjARYyc)
> 
> Overall fic title is from [Migos’ hit “Bad & Bougie”](https://youtu.be/S-sJp1FfG7Q) which was a big summer jam in America a couple years ago.
> 
> If any of you feel like doing fanart of these idiots PLEASE DO THAT, I am shy and disorganized about my fic so I never get up the courage / time to contact artists properly enough ahead of time! But I will post anything you make.
> 
> Some of the paintings from last chapter:
> 
> [Clyfford Still](https://images.app.goo.gl/cQPUzzvWF5s9Jq5T9) (I love him)
> 
> [The Twombly tryptich](https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2018/cy-twombly-in-beauty-it-is-finished-drawings-1951-2008/) (GIVE IT TO ME; 3rd image in the Installation Views, this exhibition shook me — this and their Jenny Saville show, whew)
> 
> [The Picabia](https://images.app.goo.gl/rmiZaK9AA3X5PzSt7) (I would do bad things for this, seriously, need a murder done?)
> 
> [Basquiat, at the Brandt Foundation](https://brantfoundation.org/exhibitions/jean-michel-basquiat-exhibition/) (this building is the inspiration for Barnes’ family foundation in the East Village)


	3. Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the five-year plan
> 
> *now with gorgeous illustrations by [Pot of Soup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potofsoup/pseuds/soup_illustrations)!

Steve spends the week after their tryst at the Plaza either jerking off or slamming doors. He can’t get out of his head the image of Barnes’ slim body sprawled out beneath him like a banquet, his aristocratic face wanton in ecstasy as Steve pushes into him. He wants to scoop Barnes up, idiotic, frail and easily injured Barnes, and hold him and growl at anyone who comes near him, and he wants to throw Barnes over his knee and spank him until he stops being so infuriating, and he also hates Barnes and never wants to see him again. It’s _maddening_. How can one person be so confusing? 

Of course just when Steve needs a mission to focus on, to force himself out of his own head, there isn’t one. The supervillains of this world and beyond decide _en masse_ to take the end of October off and Steve is so unsettled and in need of a fight he almost manages to book himself an interview on Fox News before Pepper finds out, scolds him for making her life harder, and cancels it with extreme prejudice. 

Tony corners him later that afternoon. He’s expecting a lecture, or an inquisition on just why he’s been a surly, monosyllabic mess lately, but Tony just furrows his brow, looks at him over his current pair of lavender-lensed sunglasses, and says, “Dinner?”

Steve blinks.

“You? Me? Ritual evening consumption of food? Upstairs in my penthouse? I was thinking Thai. Do you like Thai?” Tony makes a face. “Did you even have spices in the 1930s? Hm, maybe not Thai. They’re not big on boiling, as a cuisine.”

“Tony, I’ve had Thai before,” Steve sighs. “Thai is fine.”

“Good! _Good_,” Tony claps in delight. He then backs away quickly, wagging his finger at Steve. “Seven pm. Pep might be there? Or not. She’s planning her Paris Fashion Week trip and…” Tony shudders and waves his hands. “…I’d rather face the Chitauri again than get involved in all that.”

It’s 4pm. Steve goes down to the gym and works out for two and a half hours, destroys three punching bags, then goes back to his floor and jerks off in the shower, hating himself as he pictures Barnes on his knees on the tile floor, unable to make any of his snarky replies because his mouth is full of Steve’s dick. He shows up at Tony’s penthouse at 7:05 in a clean t-shirt and sweatpants and the slightly dazed expression of a man who’s had way too much of an endorphin rush in the very recent past. 

Tony doesn’t seem to notice. “Ah, Capsicle, come in, come in,” he says. He’s wearing an old Metallica shirt and white jeans and yellow-tinted sunglasses. He herds Steve over to a six-person dinner table that’s currently only set for two, with a veritable feast of noodles and rice and curries and dumplings steaming away in bowls in the centre of the table. It smells like heaven, if heaven smelt mostly like basil, fish sauce, garlic and chili. Steve’s stomach grumbles so loud even Tony hears it as he sits down. 

“So what’s this about, Tony,” Steve says as he pulls a bowl of fried rice towards himself. “Why are we having dinner?”

“Because I’m hungry and I haven’t sat down with you in a while?” Tony says, not meeting his eyes as he snags the green curry. “Not everyone needs an ulterior motive to hang out with you. You are, generally, pleasant company. Can’t tell a joke to save your life, but then—”

“Tony,” Steve says. It comes out in his Captain America voice.

Tony sighs, and puts down his chopsticks. “How long have you been out of the ice?”

“Two and a half years,” Steve says. He doesn’t know where this is going, but it’s nowhere good, and it’s rapidly killing his appetite.

“So the first three years after my kidnapping I was completely fine, A-OK perfect, totally coping with it,” Tony continues. “And then Barnes corners me one night and goes, ‘congratulations, it’s your third traumaversary, you’re now officially allowed to admit you need help and I’m going to introduce you to my therapist.” Tony takes off his sunglasses and fiddles with them. 

“I don’t want to talk about Barnes,” Steve warns.

“This isn’t about Barnes,” Tony says quietly. “This is about me. And you.” He puts the sunglasses on the table. “Anyway. I yelled at him. _How dare he, I was fine_, et cetera, and he just kept looking at me like he could see into my soul. He never said a goddamn word, he just waited, and before I knew what was happening I was crying, breaking down, even though I was still insisting I was fine, and then the next day he held my hand and took me to my first therapy appointment.” Tony nods, once, decisively. “It’s why I’m still alive.” Then he looks at Steve. “You’re smarter than I am,” he says.

“What?” Steve says, because normally he can’t understand a tenth of what Tony is saying when he’s in his lab.

Tony waves a hand. “No, not like _that_. Emotional smarts. Self-knowledge smarts. So I thought maybe I could save you six months of papering over internal misery and we could do all this at your two and a half year traumaversary.”

“Do what,” Steve says.

Tony tilts his head and gives him a dead-eyed glare. “Admit that everything isn’t as hunky dory as you pretend in Rogerslandia.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Steve grits out, spearing a spring roll. He’s furious all of a sudden, shaking with it, because he’s been doing so well. He’s… not left the Tower in a week, and all his friends are superheroes, but he’s just… very involved with his job. He’s _fine_. 

“Okay, champ,” Tony shrugs. “When you do know what I mean, come talk to me. I know a good therapist.”

They both poke resolutely at their food without making eye contact or talking further, and after about five minutes, when it’s starting to get _really_ awkward and Steve’s thinking of making his excuses, Pepper’s voice echoes down the hall from the elevator.

“I thought it would be cute! Besides, the outfit they sent me is _adorable_,” she says, no doubt chatting away to a friend on her phone.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Tony sit a bit straighter, a look of profound gratitude and relief on his face. Steve feels his own shoulders relax from where they’re up around his ears. Pepper. Thank God. She can—

“If you dress in head to toe Chanel _at_ Chanel, Pep, I swear to God I will sit three seats away from you and pretend I have never met you before in my life.”

Steve’s shoulders go right back up to his ears again. Because that gravelly, disdain-laden voice belongs to none other than _Bucky Goddamn Barnes_.

“Bucky, _lots_ of people do it,” says Pepper, her heels clicking closer on the hardwood floor.

“_People with no taste_ do it,” Barnes sneers. “We do _not_ wear the entire shop window, because we were not raised by wolves—“

The footsteps stop.

Steve puts his chopsticks down before he breaks them. He looks up, slowly, jaw clenched, breathing deep and even to stay in control. 

Barnes is staring at him, so tense that Steve can hear the plates of his arm readjusting. Barnes’ cheeks are still pink from the cold, or possibly from rage at seeing Steve, and his hair is falling down in curls from a messy twist at the top of his head. He’s wearing sunglasses indoors, because he’s a rich douchebag. He’s in a blue peacoat, cut slimmer than should be feasible (or legal), and skinny brown moleskine jeans, a striped sailor shirt that shows off his collarbones, and Chelsea boots. The elastic in the Chelsea boots is red and it matches the russet stripes of the big knit scarf Barnes has looped around his neck and it’s details like this that makes Steve want to punch him. With his dick. 

“I’m sorry,” Barnes says to Pepper. “I didn’t realise you had company. I should be off—“

“Nonsense!” Pepper says, dodging Barnes’ attempts to kiss her cheek goodbye, and grabbing his arm instead. “It’s just Steve. Have you met? Steve Rogers, Bucky Ba—“

Bucky waves his hand. “We’ve met,” he mumbles, just as Steve mutters, “Yeah, I know him.”

Tony quietly coughs out the word _biblically_ over the rim of his glass of Sprite, and Steve curses every generation of his Irish ancestry as he feels his traitorous complexion flare beet-red all the way down to his chest.

“Buckaroo, come sit down,” Tony says expansively, and Steve kicks him under the table. Tony canters on, undeterred: “You love Thai, and this is from Pam’s. Steve’s not very hungry, so you’d be doing me a favour if you come dig in. I hate leftovers.”

Pepper smoothly sits down next to Steve, giving his arm a friendly squeeze, while Barnes shifts uncomfortably. He dresses left. Those trousers barely hide anything—

Steve only realises Pepper has asked him something after her concerned, “Steve?”

“Uh, I’m sorry?” Steve says, forcing himself to look away from Barnes at the same time Barnes says, “Tony, I am in desperate need of a strong drink.”

“Stoli in the freezer,” Tony says.

“Thank _heavens_,” Barnes groans, and disappears into Tony’s kitchen. 

“What is going on,” Pepper says.

“I’m fine,” Steve says to Pepper. “Lots on my mind right now.” Like, when he was least expecting it, having to deal with the man he hates, who also inconveniently is the man he just half an hour ago had imagined in great detail sucking him in the shower as he jerked off. All the unresolved feelings he’d shoved into a pit to deal with later and/or let rot surge up through him again, blindsiding him: guilt, anger, lust, protectiveness, _fear_. 

He takes a deep breath and rakes his hands through his hair. He can deal with this. He’ll be polite to Barnes for ten minutes, and then leave. 

Barnes comes back with a rocks glass half-full of neat vodka and sits down opposite Steve. He takes his sunglasses off.

His right eye is almost swollen shut. This close, Steve can also see a healing cut on his lip. 

Tony whistles. “_Nice_ shiner.”

“Yeah, yeah, you should see the other guys,” Barnes says. “Pass me the Pad Prik Khing, I know you always get some.”

“Yeah, I use it to de-grease engines because it’s not actually fit for human consumption,” Tony says, reaching for a dish with its lid still on. “Anyway, what happened to your face, and please tell me it didn’t involve my wife.”

“Someone,” Pepper drawls to Tony, “decided to spend his last afternoon in New York stabbing Nazis. He showed up punch-drunk at Tom Ford and bled on their carpet. I think Mr Ford fell a little bit in love, to be honest.”

“A man’s gotta have a hobby,” Barnes says, raising his glass and taking a sip. His breath hitches a little in pain as the vodka hits the cut on his mouth, re-opening it. 

Steve can’t look away from the drop of red that wells up from Barnes’ lip. He wants to lick it off. 

“I thought you were supposed to give up all your old grudges for Rosh Hashanah,” Tony teases.

Barnes smiles back at him, teeth bloody. “If Christian children are allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve, then I’m allowed to wrap one grudge up prettily and carry it through into the New Year.”

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that,” Tony says. Over Barnes’ cry of _you’re not my rabbi_, Tony turns deliberately to his wife and says, “Anyway, Pep, how’s fashion week prep coming along?”

As Pepper launches into a long-winded description of her Paris plans and all the politics of a major fashion week appearance, Barnes scoops up some rice and some of the chili-laden dish and shoves it into his mouth. Steve is charmed to find out that Barnes isn’t a tidy eater. He eats like someone’s going to snatch his plate away at any moment. It’s oddly adorable.

Steve shakes his head. What is going on with him? Barnes is his _class enemy_. Just because he’s hot, an amazing lay, and has made Steve discover about three new kinks he didn’t know he had doesn’t mean that they can just paper over their fundamental incompatibility. 

Barnes is a pretty rich boy focused on buying art and planning his Fashion Week outfits, when he could be doing something good with his money, like buying an insulin producer and then selling insulin at cost to drive the market price of a vial down from over $300 to closer to its production cost of $3.50. He could do that, and it wouldn’t even make a dent in his fortune, a pile of money so vast that a normal person working minimum wage would have had to start 50,000 years ago, _in the Paleolithic Era_, to amass it. In the interest he makes in _one day_, he could wipe out all of America’s school lunch debt. And yet, he doesn’t.

Barnes offers the serving bowl full off the incredibly spicy dish to Pepper and she just laughs. “Bucky, I don’t know how you can eat that, even smelling it blows my head off.”

“More for me,” Barnes grins and starts to take the bowl back.

Steve reaches out. “I’ll have some,” he says.

“What are you doing, Steve, you hate spicy food,” Tony stage-whispers.

“Seriously, Steve, we only get that because Bucky is apparently made of asbestos, nobody else will touch it,” Pepper warns. “I don’t think you’ll—“

Steve glares at them and dumps half the bowl onto his rice. 

“_Smacznego_,” Barnes says, in a way that clearly means, _it’s your funeral, pal_.

“I’ll make a bet with you,” Steve says.

Barnes points to himself with his chopsticks, and raises the eyebrow of his uninjured eye.

“Yes, _you_. If I eat all this without flinching, you have to donate an equal amount of money to whatever you’re going to spend on your Fashion Week trip to help people who can’t afford basic necessities.” Steve juts his chin out and glares at Barnes, daring him.

Barnes glares back for a moment, then snorts a laugh into his sleeve. “Nah,” he says. “but you took that, you have to finish it.” He smirks at Steve. “Can’t waste food, Rogers, There are people starving in Chinatown.”

Only Pepper’s hand on his bicep keeps Steve from launching himself across the table and throttling Barnes. “So you’re doing _what_, with all that money,” Steve growls.

Barnes examines the tiny gaps in the plates of his metal knuckles. “Well, I’m having my entire yacht reupholstered in this very rare leather made from whale foreskins, so I have to save my cash for that, terribly sorry.”

“You don’t have a yacht,” Tony says.

“_Ssh_,” Barnes hisses at Tony.

“I will not shush!” Tony says, thumping the table. “I have endured ten years of you bitching to me about how motor yachts are gross, sail is better than power, and that going to sea to be cold wet and miserable and, crucially, without a motor, is an important lifestyle choice! You don’t get to tell him you’re pro yacht now, _sailor boy!_”

“Tony, you are ruining a good thing—“ Barnes says, at the same time Steve says, “He’s right, though, motor yachts are gross.”

“Shut up,” Tony says, turning to glare at Steve. “You can’t agree with Barnes! You _hate_ him!”

“Yeah!” Barnes says, his face full of righteous indignation. It’s unbearably cute. 

The _I don’t hate_ you slips out of Steve’s mouth before he can stop it, but once it’s in the air, floating between them, he realises the vast, horrible truth of it. He doesn’t hate Barnes. He’s tried, so hard, and he should hate Barnes, but… he can’t. 

Barnes blinks at him, then at his own empty glass. “I need more vodka,” he says, before disappearing into the kitchen. 

Tony and Pepper stare at Steve. Tony’s jaw falls open and Pepper, without turning, reaches a finger under his chin and shuts it. 

Steve gets up and follows Barnes.

The lights are off in the kitchen. Barnes’ back is to Steve. He’s leaning one slim hip against the granite island as he pours more vodka into his glass. He’s painted by the light from the open refrigerator and the glow of the New York skyline out the picture windows and he’s beautiful, an angular, delicate thing of structure and shadow.

“I don’t hate you, Barnes,” Steve whispers, as his hands move of their own accord to frame Barnes’ slim, wiry waist. Barnes puts his glass and the bottle down and turns in Steve’s hands, to face him, his pretty forehead creased in confusion. So Steve continues. “I just find you insufferable.” Somehow he’s leaned close enough to smell Barnes: juniper, old leather, and limes. Barnes is looking at him, wary, like a deer about to startle back into the forest. Steve gives in to temptation and runs his tongue over the cut on Barnes’ lip. “And irresistible,” Steve finishes, his voice dropping into rough registers of want. Their lips are so close together Steve can feel the warmth of the other man’s skin.

For a moment it feels, there in the dark, like Barnes is going to kiss him.

Then Barnes inhales sharply and pushes hard against Steve’s chest. He backs away until he’s almost standing in the refrigerator, then does a double take as he realises it’s still open, and shuts the fridge door. 

Steve steps towards him, hand out in apology.

“Stop,” Barnes says. “Please don’t come any closer.” It’s meant as a warning, but it’s soft, a plea, like Barnes is barely holding on to himself. Steve knows the feeling. He had absolute ironclad reasons for not wanting to be around Barnes a moment ago, and now he’s… mislaid them. Somewhere. 

Barnes runs a hand through his hair, further dislodging what remains of his twist. “This was a mistake,” he sighs. He looks up at Steve then, his big grey eyes luminous in the reflected light of Manhattan. “I don’t regret anything we did, but… I don’t do casual, Steve. And… I won’t change for you. If you can’t appreciate me, love me as I am, right now, I’ll never be good enough for you. There’ll always be another hoop for me to jump through, another test for me to pass, and…” He shakes his head. “I can’t. I’ve spent a not inconsiderable part of the last 10 years of my life sorting out the shit in my head. It was absolutely no fun, but I did it, and I won’t let anything pull me backwards. Even though I want you so much it hurts all the way down to the marrow of my bones to walk away from you.”

Barnes groans and turns, resting his temple against the door of the fridge. “I also think your wanting me to change is maybe your way of fooling yourself into thinking that you’re moving forwards, too, when you’re not. Not really. Bullying other people about their problems isn’t the same thing as dealing with your own, no matter how hard you pretend. It’s just a very sophisticated avoidance method.”

“What problems—“ Steve starts.

Barnes turns back to him, and Steve suddenly knows what Tony meant by _he looked at me like he could see into my soul_. “You’re still living in the courtesy apartment Tony gave you, two and a half years later. You have no friends outside work, no hobbies, no _life_.” Barnes smiles then, thin and watery. “But without knowing me at all, you’d lecture me about how I live mine.” He reaches out to Steve, as if to touch him one last time before he goes, but thinks better of it and withdraws his hand. “Your problems are your own to face. If you choose to address them, and if I’m still here when you’re finished, you’re welcome to give me a call. Until then, I wish you the best, and I’m sorry that I can’t play these games any more. Goodbye, Steve.”

And with that, Barnes leaves.

It feels like Barnes takes all the life out of the room with him when he goes. Steve watches his exit, hears his polite goodbyes to Pepper and Tony, the quiet sussuration of his coat as he settles it over his shoulders, the soft tap of his heels on the parquet as he walks away. The distant thrum of the elevator doors closing behind him.

In the dark of the kitchen, he takes a giant swig from the vodka bottle, counts to 100, then rejoins Pepper and Tony. 

“Well,” Pepper says quietly, “someone could have told me that Bucky and Steve had… history.”

“We don’t,” Steve mutters, glaring at the pile of spicy dry curry chicken and rice in front of him. He’s going to eat it, just to spite Barnes, even though Barnes can’t see. Even though he’ll never know. “He’s an idle billionaire and I’m the child of working-class socialists. We had a one-night stand. That’s all.” He scoops up a spoonful of the curry and shoves it in his mouth.

Tony makes a choked-off _no, don’t do it_ sound. Pepper just sighs and stands up. “I’ll get the yoghurt. It helps,” she says.

“Helps with what,” Steve says, swallowing. 

Two seconds later, his entire mouth and digestive tract are _on fire_. He doesn’t cough, because he has dignity, goddamn it, but he can feel his face turning bright red. And his neck. And his chest.

Pepper plonks a pot of plain greek yoghurt in front of him. “Spoonful of yoghurt, then lots of water,” she says, sitting back down. Steve nods his thanks as tears begin to blur his vision. 

“So,” Pepper says. “You know I grew up in a trailer park, right?” 

“Uh,” Steve says. He did not know that. He’d… never asked.

“Do you consider me a class traitor for marrying Tony?” She continues.

Steve shakes his head. It’s _different_. Pepper has made Tony so much better, was instrumental in encouraging him to give up weapons manufacturing, and has built out the philanthropic side of Stark Industries to—

“Oh,” Steve says.

“Oh indeed,” Pepper says, reaching for Steve’s plate of food. “Here, let me throw that out.”

“No! I want to eat it,” Steve says.

“Why,” Tony says. “Barnes will never know if you finish it.”

“Let him punish himself if it makes him happy,” Pepper sighs. 

“Or he could go apologise or whatever to Bucky, because I thought my eyes were bleeding from the chili in the Pad Prik but it was actually the UST,” Tony says. 

“No,” Steve says, finally able to talk again. “It can never happen between us.” It comes out sounding way more melancholy than he intended, partially because he hasn’t really regained fine motor control over his mouth yet. 

“And why is that?” Pepper asks. “You’re two of my favourite people, and I can actually see you together.”

Steve sighs. He’s so _tired_, all of a sudden. “What does it say about fairness, and accessibility of justice to the working class, if Captain America is dating a billionaire? We already have cops killing people of colour with impunity. I go away for 70 years and come back to find that my image has been used by Conservatives for decades to suppress rights, that I’ve somehow become the symbol of cops and “family values” and union-busting. I’m trying as hard as I can to undo that. But how are people going to believe Captain America stands for them if his boyfriend has a yacht?”

“He doesn’t have a yacht, Steve,” Pepper says. 

“Pardon my French,” Tony cuts in, “but _fuck_ Captain America, I hate that guy, he’s a stuck-up piece of shit. What about Steve Rogers? Does _he_ get to be happy?”

Steve rests his fingers on his water glass and spins it in a slow circle.

“_Steve_. Name one thing you’ve done for yourself since coming out of the ice. One little act of selfishness, and I’ll shut up and walk away from this,” Tony says.

“I…” Steve begins. He can’t think of anything. “Selfishness is bad, though.”

Tony groans. “Steve Rogers gets to have a life, too. He gets to be happy. And sometimes the things that make you happy aren’t what you expect. I married my secretary! World’s biggest cliché. Hot and cold running supermodels, Hollywood starlets, but _no_, I marry a Business Administration major from a community college in Kentucky. I’ve never _been_ to Kentucky.”

“Yes you have, dear, it’s where the Derby is,” Pepper says. “And Steve, think about this. How much good would it do the world if you were out? If the world knew Captain America was queer. When we discussed this before you didn’t want to come out because of the media scrutiny your partner would be under. Bucky’s the toughest person I know, and he’s been under that sort of scrutiny since he was born. Plus, he can defend himself physically. He’s not a super-soldier, of course, but he’s no patsy.”

Steve remembers watching a tsunami come in once, during a fight. The way the sea pulled way back, past the breakwater, and then built and built and built. The strangely slow, imperial pace of the wave, coupled with its massive inevitability. It’s like this with Barnes and Tony and Pepper. They’re all right, and that’s the problem, their rightnesses piling on top of each other, turning into a giant wave that’s crashing through the walls Steve has put up between him and all the things he’s trying not to deal with, brushing them aside like wet cardboard and flooding through him and coming out as—

—as tears. 

He can’t even pretend it’s the chili any more. He swabs at his eyes with his palm and distantly he can hear Pepper say, “Oh, _Steve_,” and Tony mutter the words _feelings_ and _bye_ as he leaves the table. He can’t stop crying, though, and like the wave, it builds, until his gigantic shoulders are shaking and he’s gasping for breath between sobs. 

Pepper’s small, cool hands turn him towards her, and she tucks his face into her shoulder and he gets snot and tears all over her mint-green cashmere cardigan. She skritches her nails through the back of his hair and just whispers _there, there,_ in between passing him tissues that she makes materialise from somewhere. 

“You know, when I first married Tony, it was very hard,” Pepper whispers. “A lot of people made me feel bad about my background. Like I didn’t belong, because I didn’t know which fork to use, or how to dress. I had no idea how to be a rich man’s wife, and all Tony would say was _fuck ‘em_, and, well,” Pepper chuckles, “that wasn’t very helpful.” She pets Steve’s hair a little longer, then says, “it was Bucky who taught me how to navigate this world. Took me out to the Russian Tea Room one day for lunch, got me high on vodka, and said _Potts, this won’t do. Just because these things don’t matter doesn’t mean they don’t hurt._ Lunches with him were basically my finishing school.”

She hands Steve another couple tissues and waves off his gasping apologies for the mess he’s making of her sweater. “Another thing. He comes from very, very old money, Steve. He’s incredibly discrete, and will fight you before he gives up any of his secrets, but you should know that he gives an _astonishing_ amount of money away. It’s all anonymous. One of Bucky’s old-fashioned quirks is he believes if anyone knows he’s doing a good deed, if he gets publicity out of it, it invalidates the deed. _The giver has to get nothing out of it or else it’s not a gift, it’s an exchange_, he says. He also helped me set up all the Stark foundations, because he thought I’d be happier with something concrete to do, and he was right. He goes to Fashion Week not for himself, but as my bodyguard, in a way. People can be terribly mean, especially in that world, but very few of them will take on Bucky. Once, at Saint Laurent, he ethered a Kardashian on my behalf so severely that she stayed off social media for a whole week.”

It feels like an eternity passes where Steve does nothing but cry, but in reality it’s probably less than ten minutes before he whispers into Pepper’s hair, “he walked into my life and changed everything and I don’t want him to go, Pepper. What do I do?”

He can feel Pepper’s smile. “Well. Have you tried romance, Steve?”

Steve stills. “I have… no idea how to do that.”

“Oh, Steve,” Pepper says, again. “What will we do with you.”

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

Steve buys a ticket to the Barnes Foundation exhibit and sees it again as a member of the public, one rainy Tuesday morning in early November. The sword is gone; in its place is a little bronze Chinese sculpture of a horse. Its ass is shiny, like someone had given it a pat every day on their way past. 

He asks Tony to hold his hand and take him to his first therapy appointment. 

Steve spends two sessions not really saying much and then in his third session he breaks down. He sleeps for 24 hours afterwards. When he wakes up, he feels so light he’s surprised his feet still touch the ground. 

He buys some romance novels. 

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

SHIELD pulls him in for a briefing a fortnight later. They’d been tracing a dangerous Asgardian relic that had found its way to Earth, and just as it had surfaced in the hands of a crime syndicate and SHIELD prepared to go after it, it had disappeared again. There’d been no sign of it for a month and Director Fury is concerned. Thor’s coming back from Asgard to help them search. 

“We last had sight of it in Finland,” Fury says. “We thought the Scandinavian crime syndicate that had it just moved it somewhere more secure, but new intel suggests they lost it. This thing has world-ending power, if it falls into the wrong hands—“

“The head of the syndicate, did he wear a ring on his punching hand?” Steve asks, before he can think twice about it. He pictures a cut on a pretty face, a joking aside in an art studio about _consulting on safe storage of a nordic antiquity_. A loose-knit jumper slipping down over a half-metal shoulder. Even now, a month later, thinking about Barnes still sends a twist of want through Steve’s guts.

“...Yes, he does,” Fury says, dry as the Gobi Desert. “Care to tell me how you know that, Rogers?”

“I think I know who has the relic,” Steve says. “It’s safe. Thor and I can pick it up in the next week.” He texts Tony to text Barnes, and Tony doesn’t even give him any shit about playing messenger boy, just relays Barnes’ reply that they’re to meet in the Bois de Boulogne in three days, and a set of coordinates.   
Fury’s watching him, narrow-eyed. 

“A friend has it,” Steve smiles.

“You have friends, Rogers? That’s new,” Fury says.

“Just the one, but working on it, sir,” Steve replies, and he’s not prepared for the smile Fury gives him in reply, or the man’s genuinely heartfelt _good for you_. 

»»・・・・✪・・・・««

Three days later, he and Thor are waiting in a secluded grove in the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. He’s in his stealth suit, and he’s not quite sure why he bothered, because Thor is _Thor_, red cape and blue crackle of electricity and a big shiny metal helmet. Demigods don’t really need stealth, apparently. 

He’s nervous. He’s rehearsed this with both Pepper and his therapist, what he’s hoping to get out of seeing Barnes again, how he’s going to handle it. He has a plan. Not, like, a five-year plan. Those never work. More like a five-date plan. He’ll win Barnes over, if it kills him. 

He realises Thor is watching him. “Are we expecting danger, friend Steve?” Thor asks. “Your heart is beating very fast.”

“No!” Steve squeaks. “I just— I haven’t seen this friend in a while and I’m looking forwards to it,” he finishes, hoping he’s salvaged some of his dignity in front of his teammate. But judging by Thor’s amused _Oho!_, he has not. 

Steve clears his throat and shifts his weight, managing to step on a twig that crackles so loud it makes him wince.

Barnes chooses then to walk out of the shadows, more silently than any normal human should be able. 

And Steve nearly swallows his tongue, so it doesn’t roll out of his mouth and all the way down to the ground like the wolf in a Max Fleischer cartoon. 

Barnes is in some sort of strappy leather bondage jacket, its redundantly large amount of buckles straining over his broad chest and then tight around his tiny little wasp waist. He’s got a gun strapped to one hip and his sword slung across his back and his metal arm fully on display. The rest of him is in slim tac pants with reinforced knees, and boots. He has what must be NV goggles pushed up into his hair and some sort of mask over the lower half of his face. It’s both intimidating and incredibly hot. 

Barnes spares Steve the barest of glances as he unbuckles the mask and turns towards Thor. “I believe this is yours,” he says, handing Thor a duffel bag with something heavy in it. “Please ask your people to stop mislaying magical possessions on Earth, because I’m the asshole who has to deal with it when you do.” 

Thor blinks at him, stunned, then breaks into a wide grin as he takes the duffel bag. He sticks out a big hand. “I am The Odinson. Who are you? I _like_ you.”

“James Barnes,” Barnes says, shaking Thor’s hand, turning his back to Steve as he does so. 

Steve has a really good view of Barnes’ tight little ass in tac pants and he files it away for future wanking purposes, only mildly hating himself. He hates himself more for how annoyed he feels that Barnes is talking to Thor and not him. He has to think of something to say, to get Barnes’ attention. 

Thor is beaming at Barnes, clearly delighted to be sassed by this plucky Earthling, and he’s saying something about how he’ll make sure his people are more careful about their possessions in the future when Steve interrupts.

“Nice jacket,” is what comes out of his mouth, sounding way more sarcastic than he intended. He facepalms internally.

“Thanks,” Barnes says, his eyes flicking briefly to Steve. “It’s Alaia.”

Meanwhile, Thor is squinting at Barnes. Not at him, but at the air around him. “Your aura…” Thor begins, tentatively. “You’re a Nistarim.”

Steve doesn’t miss the tension that those words create in Barnes’ body. Barnes shakes his head. “Nah. We think my great granddad was, but unless the big man has really loosened up his rules, not me.”

“But,” Thor says, his brow creased in confusion as he waves a hand around Barnes.

“My aura’s messed up. I spend so much time around weird shit I’m probably radioactive at this point,” Barnes explains. 

“What’s a Nistarim?” Steve asks.

“They’re guardians—“ Thor begins, but Barnes cuts him off. “Jewish thing, not important,” Barnes demurs.

“Well, thank you, new friend Barnes, for taking care of our property while it was missing,” Thor says, giving Barnes a slap on the metal shoulder that causes Barnes to wobble a bit on his feet. “I shall now remove it from your planet for good.”

Thor points Mjolnir in the air and, a moment and a clap of thunder later, is gone.

Barnes slumps against a tree trunk. He looks tired. “Well, that’s a relief,” he says. He looks at Steve then, and his smile is a thin, delicate thing. “I always feel like I’m traveling with a target on my back when I’m transporting an artifact.” He chuckles, and indicates Steve’s shield. “Of course, here I am saying that to a man who actually does wander around with a target strapped to his back.” Barnes pushes off from the tree and stretches. “It was nice to see you again, Rogers. You look good.”

As Barnes begins to melt back into the shadows, Steve realises he’s completely failed to say anything, that his plan — like all five-year plans ever —has fallen woefully short of target. 

“Bucky,” he chokes out.

Barnes turns, no doubt surprised at the use of his first name. 

Steve clears his throat and stands up a bit straighter, sticking his chest out. “Would you go out on a date with me?” He mostly keeps the nerves out of his voice; it only shakes a little.

There’s a long pause as Barnes looks around, cartoonishly, then points to himself.

“Yes, _you_, idiot,” Steve says, both fond and angry at the same time. “I’m sorry, Buck. I was… fighting a whole bunch of things. Most of which had nothing to do with you, but I kinda used you as a focus.”

He gains courage as he lets the words, lets _the truth_ tumble out of him. “You were right. I am working through a lot of stuff. And I had — still have — all this anger I don’t know what to do with. And I was fine, when it was just that. Then you came along and you made me feel something else and that upset the entire delicate balance I had going. I mean, how dare you. With your bespoke suits and your old frayed sweaters and your overly bondage-inspired uniform. And your bad attitude and your stupid smart mouth that I want to kiss, all the time. I thought it was because I wanted to make you stop talking via direct intervention but... no. I just want to kiss you.”

Barnes is just standing there, a little stunned, which makes it easy for Steve to step forwards and take his mismatched hands in Steve’s own.

“And yes, you’re a billionaire and I’m a socialist, but I focused on those labels for too long, instead of focusing on the person. And the person, he’s brave and funny and doesn’t take any shit and loves the same things I love and also, he’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.” He smiles. “You’re so beautiful, here in the moonlight.”

And Barnes… Barnes blushes, and ducks his head. 

Steve reaches a finger under his chin and raises it, so he can keep drowning in Barnes’ eyes. His voice goes low, and rough. “So can I take you on a date tonight?” He asks. “We’ll see Paris, together?”

Barnes tenses. “Ah,” he says, and steps away, out of Steve’s arms. “I already have plans tonight. I’m sorry.”

And with that, he steps into the shadows and disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, AO3 is being a pill about editing from a mac so I’m having to do all my italicising and formatting piecemeal. 
> 
> Chapter title from [MXMS’ gorgeous song “Paris”;](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv8v1Mwlx50) their Funeral Pop EP is one of the albums of the year, get on it, kids. 
> 
> This fic will be four chapters, mostly so I can end with a perfect Frances Quinlan song.
> 
> This chapter: sometimes when you’re way further along the therapy / recovery curve than some of your friends, interesting things happen. And you want to show them the way, but also, it’s important to let people fight their own battles. So Barnes is here with some real talk about that.
> 
> Also, sorry for the angst, we will have an HEA, fret not.
> 
> Ah! I almost forgot. Bucky’s whale foreskin upholstery throwaway is taken from Ari Onassis’ yacht, where [oh yes he did](https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/all-at-sea-with-the-magnate-and-the-diva-1839128.html).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Steve's nosebleed moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21556498) by [soup_illustrations (potofsoup)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potofsoup/pseuds/soup_illustrations)


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